SCOTLAND’S former health secretary has said she is “angry” and “dispirited” after the SNP Government shelved plans to create a National Care Service.
On Thursday, Social Care Minister Maree Todd told MSPs that proposals for the new service had been scrapped after opposition politicians, local authorities, and trade unions pulled their support.
The National Care Service (Scotland) Bill will continue through Holyrood, the SNP minister said, with the overhaul of social care removed. Instead it will only contain changes which have cross-party support such as Anne’s Law – which will allow care home residents to be visited by a named person even when visiting restrictions are in place, following concerns raised during the pandemic.
Speaking to BBC Scotland on Sunday, former SNP health secretary Jeane Freeman said she struggled to understand how widespread support for a National Care Service had dissipated.
She said: “I commissioned [former NHS Scotland chief executive] Derek Feeley to conduct what became the Feeley review, which involved a small number of experts, including the former auditor general, Cosla, international comparators, and so on, and that produced a set of recommendations.
“The purpose of it was really a recognition that adult social care was not equitable across the country, that was very high quality in some parts of the country and not high enough quality in others.
“The focus was not on – across the whole of Scotland – was not on the experience of people receiving adult social care, but was more tipped towards the needs of the system to deliver.
“We got political support, and critically, we got support from Cosla for all of it with one exception, and that was the structure change that he proposed.
“So how do I feel now? I feel angry, I feel dispirited because I think it is beyond my understanding how all of that support has been lost.”
After Todd said that the National Care Service would not move forward, a Scottish Government spokesperson insisted it had “not been scrapped”.
“A revised approach to the National Care Service, including amended proposals for the bill, has been put forward to parliament, “ they said.
“As the Minister for Social Care made clear, these proposals will deliver a National Care Service that improves the experience of everyone who relies on social care, social work and community health in Scotland.”
However, Freeman said that the Scottish Government should not be “trying to convince us that there is still a National Care Service when self-evidently nobody is convinced of that”.
She told the BBC that ministers must instead focus on ensuring that resourcing in the care sector is adequate as well as “what is needed to recognise the skills and the professionalism of staff working in that sector, how that needs to be improved, and what do we need to do to provide them with a career and to attract more people into that sector”.
