THE umbrella body for Scotland’s councils has accused the Scottish Government of misleading MSPs in a row over the cost of the new National Care Service.
When speaking to Holyrood’s Finance committee on November 8, Kevin Stewart and one of his officials claimed that they had engaged with Cosla in a dispute over the estimated cost of setting up the new service.
However, in a letter to MSPs this week, the cross-party body which represents all 32 of Scotland's council said this simply was not accurate.
During the session, Mr Stewart queried a figure of £1.5bn put forward by Cosla.
“I am not sure where Cosla and others have got these estimates from. I am more than happy to go through those estimates with them in depth, but we have not had sight of them and I would be happy to take an overview in that respect.”
When Tory MSP Douglas Lumsden asked if officials had contacted Cosla to clarify the figures, Mr Stewart said: We have conversations about data and money, but we have had no explanation for that figure of £1.5bn."
Donna Bell, the Scottish Government’s director of social care and national care service development added: “We have engaged with Cosla on its figures. The background information has not been forthcoming.”
When asked if they would expect to see that soon, Mr Stewart replied: "I would have expected to see it before now.
"Anybody who submits such a number must have the workings behind it, but we do not have them and I do not recognise the figure of £1.5bn.
"Now that those questions have been asked by the committee, I hope that we can all see the workings behind the £1.5bn figure."
The minster said the government had "discussions with Cosla on a constant basis."
In a stinging letter, Mirren Kelly, Colsa's chief officer, told MSPs that "to the best of our knowledge, we have not received any enquiries from the Scottish Government regarding the calculation of this figure."
Ms Kelly also pointed out that the £1.5bn is not their cost for “implementing the NCS”, but “an estimate we have previously made of the total costs of implementing all of the recommendations of the Independent Review of Adult Social Care”
The body said it had cited the figure several times before during NCS Bill consultations and in financial memorandum correspondence.
“This figure is included in the Executive Summary of our response to the Call for Views on the NCS Bill, and also in answer to the Financial Memorandum questions."
She said that in both of those documents they had made clear the figure was their estimate for "the total costs of implementing the recommendations of the Independent Review of Adult Social Care."
And that this £1.5bn was "far in excess of the ‘more than £840 million’ stated by the Scottish Government in the Resource Spending Review as the value of its commitment to increase investment in social care by 25% during this Parliament.’”
The Scottish Government has been approached for comment.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel