Meeting of the Parliament 27 November 2024
I say that that is totally unacceptable, which is why we need reform. We need investment to be delivered where it can make the best possible change for disabled people and those who require social care.
Anyone who is trying to frustrate the process of reforming social care needs to reflect on those facts. The system is not working. We need to focus our energies on accelerating the process and making progress in the areas that we can agree on, but challenging ourselves on the areas where there is not agreement.
Ensuring that we provide a social care and community healthcare system for the future is an investment for us all. Contrary to Labour’s factually inaccurate motion, we have increased the investment that is going into social care by £1 billion in this session of Parliament. However, investment alone has not driven the kind of improvement that people need and expect.
The danger of the employer national insurance contribution calamity looms large across the social care sector, which will need to find an estimated £84 million to survive. Frustrating the progress of social care reform through the development of a national care service is to ignore the pleas of the very people who are desperately calling for change, and accepting crippling and punitive taxation through ENICs is to actively work against them. For too long, individuals have been telling us that social care needs reform. Now is the time for the Parliament to exercise its duty to listen and to act in the best interests of the people of Scotland.
I move amendment S6M-15613.4, to leave out from “formally committed” to end and insert:
“introduced the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill in June 2022 to address the substantial concerns highlighted from the Feeley review, which noted poor and variable levels of social care around the country and the need for nationally enforceable standards of care; further notes that the Bill includes a right to respite care, Anne’s Law and ethical commissioning; welcomes that the Scottish Government is developing a collective bargaining approach for social care in collaboration with local government, trade unions and social care providers and its continued commitment to establishing a National Social Work Agency; acknowledges the open letter from disabled people’s organisations, which states that wholesale reform is so urgently needed; agrees that the service users, their families and carers should be the focus of a National Care Service; deplores that the increase in employer national insurance contributions from the UK Government will negatively impact on care services by increasing the cost to third parties contracted to deliver adult and children’s social care services by almost £90 million and, according to COSLA estimates, to local government by £265 million, and agrees that, if the UK Labour administration does not reimburse this in full, it is the provision of these services that will feel the brunt.”
15:10Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.