Meeting of the Parliament 03 December 2025
It is very clear that the Labour budget was damaging to our social care sector and our charities, but we cannot get away from the fact that the SNP has had 18 years in which it could have funded councils appropriately and done the right thing by social care.
The SNP seems to be a legend in its own mind. This Government wants to tell us that the crisis is all caused by UK migration policy. Let me be clear: international carers make an invaluable contribution, but the idea that Scotland’s social care crisis began this year or last year is simply delusional. We have had a workforce crisis since 2015 because the workforce has shrunk. The number of nursing staff in care homes has fallen by 28 per cent in a decade and providers are relying on financial reserves just to stay afloat—none of that was caused by a visa rule change.
What was caused by this SNP Government was the waste of £30 million on the now-abandoned national care service—money that could have employed 1,200 care workers or delivered 1 million hours of care, all squandered. When that collapsed, what did we get? Another talking shop that was boycotted by trade unions and that cost thousands more. That is not reform; it is panic and drift.
Meanwhile, delayed discharge has become the norm. In October alone, nearly 2,000 people were trapped in hospital despite being medically fit to go home. More than 61,000 bed days were lost. Every delay that is backed up into accident and emergency or cancelled operations grinds staff into the ground. Let us not forget the human cost beyond the NHS. There are 627,000 unpaid carers, nearly half of whom are cutting back on food and heating, and a third of whom have been driven into debt, with only 13 per cent receiving a break. If that does not sound the alarm bells, I genuinely do not know what will spark ministers’ action.
We must close the funding gaps in health and social care partnerships, properly fund councils, establish a real workforce plan and finally recognise the workforce’s value—not with press releases but with pay, training and respect. Scotland does not need more excuses or more constitutional diversions; it needs competence, honesty and a Government that is willing to fix the system that it has allowed to deteriorate before our very eyes.
I move amendment S6M-19977.2, to leave out from “, and calls” to end and insert:
“; recognises the significant impact that delays to social care packages and inadequate community-based social care provision have on the NHS, including longer avoidable stays in hospital; condemns the waste of £30 million for developing the now abandoned plans for a National Care Service; urges the Scottish Government to address record levels of delayed discharge and rising waiting times for social care assessments, and calls on the Scottish Ministers to close the funding gaps faced by health and social care partnerships by ensuring councils are appropriately funded, establish a proper workforce plan for social care to improve recruitment and retention of staff, and make sure that the value of Scotland’s care workforce is properly recognised.”
15:12Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.