IF A MINISTER gets a rocket from the Presiding Officer you can be assured that the issue is one on with which the Government is uncomfortable.

Thus it was yesterday when new Health Secretary Shona Robison was taken to task by Tricia Marwick for making a £100m announcement to the media before announcing it to Parliament.

It wasn't the sum involved, a tiny fraction of the block grant or health budget, but for Ms Marwick the parliamentary etiquette. For The Herald, however, far more important than either - sympathy though we have with the Presiding Officer - was the issue involved: the absolute requirement to sort out the country's care provision to put an end to unnecessary bed-blocking.

We have banged on about the issue through our Time for Action campaign not for cheap headlines or because it is a convenient stick with which to beat politicians, but because it is the key to the continued survival of our NHS for decades to come, a vital mechanism the system needs if it is to cope with the happy news that we are all living longer.

Only yesterday the Care Inspectorate's study of the Fife Partnership, the joint approach by the local authority and NHS, described the findings as "mixed".

We recognise that councils face tough times. Straitened funding - whether or not caused by the Council Tax freeze - and demands for everything from nurseries and free school meals to libraries and leisure centres needed more than ever in these tough times, combine to squeeze social work provision in general and social care for the elderly in particular.

But we cannot overstate enough that if councils fail to put in place care packages to look after older people, whether in their own homes or in residential care, then bed-blocking will continue to worsen in hospitals, with huge knock-on consequences.

The jury will remain out as to whether a further £30m this year and £35m in each of the next two years will do more than scratch the surface of the problem, but at least the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities is singing from the same hymn sheet.

Targets and thresholds have not been met so far. April sees the advent of new Health and Social Care Partnerships, grand titles for a theoretical good, and there is even a Cosla "task force" to oversee the "roll out plans to support delayed discharge improvement."

We will suspend scepticism at the jargon and the pledges. We will put aside the fact that previous targets and deadlines have largely failed. This really is the time to get it right in terms of our older citizens not being forced into hospital wards inappropriately, or being trapped there for want of a care package.

If Scotland does not create a properly integrated, functioning health and social care system then the long-term damage to the rest of the NHS could be incalculable.

Ms Robison has been handed this chalice. We hope it is not poisoned and we hope she will emerge from her statement on long-term planning on Thursday as the Health Secretary who actually cracked the enigma code of our times. If she does, we will applaud her and the Health Service in the rest of these islands may look to her example. If not, there may be no drawing board to go back to.