National Care Service Council now “dead in the water” following Council leaders’ opposition

The SNP Government’s so called “National Care Service” is now “dead in the water”, according to South Lanarkshire Liberal Democrat Group Leader Councillor Robert Brown. Councillor Brown was speaking after Council leaders on COSLA decided to withdraw support from the ill-fated scheme.

Robert Brown said:

“Scottish Liberal Democrats have opposed this SNP bureaucratic power grab from Day One – indeed we are the only Party to have done so. Since it was first mooted, Liberal Democrats on South Lanarkshire Council have repeatedly got the Council to support motions condemning the plan.

With purse strings tight it is madness to continue with a billion-pound bureaucracy that no one wants. Ministers must scrap it immediately and instead use the earmarked money to invest in frontline care staff and services.

The GMB Union recently condemned the centralisation of care services, describing the SNP plans as “an added level of bureaucracy” which “won’t be able to deliver real change in the sector”. I would go much further. It is a crazy waste of over £1 billion of scarce public money which should be spent on improving local care services, not on an SNP vanity project.

Even the Scottish Government’s Minister for Social Care (Maree Todd MSP) admitted that progress “had been slow” and that delivery “is going to take a number of years”.

There is now a mountain of opposition to this white elephant of a ministerial takeover. The SNP government should do the right thing and scrap it immediately. Even the SNP must be able to see that a distant Minister in Edinburgh taking decisions about care services in Rutherglen, East Kilbride or Hamilton is nonsense.

Waiting for the wrong solution in 2029 isn’t going to fix the care crisis that thousands of families are struggling with right now. It’s why councils have followed frontline workers in withdrawing their support.

Scottish Liberal Democrats want to use the money to create a new minimum wage for care workers to tackle chronic staff shortages, get people the care they need and relieve pressures right across the NHS.”