Hansard

In my first days as leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, I was visited by John-Paul Marks, who at the time was permanent secretary of the Scottish civil service. He explained to me the very parlous funding outlook for the Scottish Government and that pretty much all budgets across all directorates would be contracting, save one, which was the increase in spending that was allocated to deliver the SNP’s flagship, election-winning promise of delivering a national care service. That was a promise that we had opposed from the outset, but, nevertheless, the SNP had won the election, and I understood why he was apportioning that extra money. What a waste.

This week is national carers week, yet here we are, marking it with a piece of legislation that falls far short of what Scotland’s carers and those who they care for truly deserve. The bill is not what it says on the tin, either—there is nothing about it that delivers needed and demonstrable reform. We might have very different visions of what reform the care sector needs, but this is none of them.

Care workers are overstretched and undervalued. People who need care are waiting too long or going without altogether, and family carers, unpaid and unseen, are burning out because the system is simply not coping. That crisis demands attention, urgency and leadership, with real reform. Instead, what we have had from SNP ministers is confusion, waste, retreat and attempts at centralisation.

Let us not forget that the bill began life as a national care service bill—a bureaucratic power grab to hoard control of social care in Edinburgh, rather than empowering those closest to the people who need it. The Scottish Liberal Democrats were the only party to oppose that flawed idea from the very first. We did so—and we did more than just oppose it—in budget negotiations this year. We took action to ensure that it was excised from the pages of this legislation, finally. We made it clear that we would not support any budget that contained a single penny on national care service spending, and we won, but, sadly, not before the SNP had squandered £30 million of the money—earmarked and identified to me by JP Marks all those years ago—that could have paid the salaries of 1,200 care workers for an entire year. In those budget negotiations, we secured millions more for front-line social care and fashioned new training pipelines for care workers through Scotland’s colleges.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats have a proud record in this area. We introduced free personal care for the elderly, we enshrined the right to carers’ leave in employment law and we have just secured a change to let family carers earn more without losing the support that they depend on.

My colleague at Westminster Sir Ed Davey has made care a cornerstone of our manifesto and has spoken bravely about his experiences as a carer. I am sure that many members will be familiar with his story. We also want to see a United Kingdom-wide care wage that is at least £2 above the minimum wage and removal of the national insurance hike on care providers. That is the vision for care that the sector and Scotland need. It is what carers deserve, and it is what my party—the Scottish Liberal Democrats—will keep fighting for.

My party is prepared to support the bill that is before us, but let me be clear that it does not represent the transformational change of our care sector that we need to abate the crisis. We will support it because of the positive changes that it will make in recognising carers’ rights to breaks, strengthening advocacy and ensuring that loved ones can stay connected to people and homes through Anne’s law. I pay my personal tribute to Anne’s family, who are with us today. The bill will also improve information sharing and it offers better procurement routes for the third sector. Those are useful steps, but they are no substitute for the real reform that the sector desperately needs.

We are also glad that, finally, the bill no longer contains the most damaging parts of the original plan, which would have centralised decision making away from the communities that understand how best to deliver care, particularly in remote and rural communities, and instead placed it in the hands of ministers. However, we must not let the bill pass without a reckoning. The SNP Government should apologise to care users, to care providers and to Scotland’s incredible care workforce.