Meeting of the Parliament 08 March 2023
I thank Paul O’Kane for his amendment.
Finally, the SNP has come to the same realisation as the unions, local authorities, its own back benchers and the public. It is the realisation to which committees of the Parliament came: that the national care service plans are unaffordable, unworkable and a massive distraction from the crisis in care that the SNP has created across Scotland.
Even the cabinet secretary responsible for the bill, Humza Yousaf, is beating a hasty retreat from his own policy. He is not alone, of course, because the SNP’s leadership candidates are undermining the policy and throwing it overboard as they seek to abandon Nicola Sturgeon’s legacy in their desperate bid to captain the SNP’s sinking ship.
Perhaps the only person in Scotland who still believes that there will be a national care service is Kevin Stewart. The minister believes that, so long as the music is playing, he will get up and dance. The only problem is that, on the national care service, the minister is still dancing but the music has stopped.
The decision today should be about whether we ditch or delay the bill. The national care service policy is clearly wrong for Scotland and is in disarray. Only last night, we saw the fissures laid bare as two ministers and one former minister trashed policies from the manifesto upon which they were elected.
It is no surprise that the Government is now seeking to delay the bill, but to try to hide from the Parliament why it is doing so is an outrage. The Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care and the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care must come before Parliament and explain to members their concerns about the bill and their climb-down.
The vote still will not go far enough. The Parliament should be voting to scrap the SNP’s failing social care plans because social care in Scotland is in crisis and the last thing that carers, staff and patients need is a major bureaucratic overhaul of the system that would divert precious resources away from the front line and into employing hundreds more management and administrative staff. The SNP must listen to those voices, abandon the plans and put every penny into front-line care.
In the absence of a total withdrawal of the plan, we support the longer delay proposed by Labour. However, the delay, whether to June or November, will inevitably be only a precursor to the bill being scrapped once the SNP’s divisive leadership election comes to a close. We simply cannot afford to see £1.3 billion diverted away from front-line local services when the sector is crying out for help.