4. To ask the Scottish Government what spending it has allocated from its budget to date for its plans for a national care service. (S6O-03161)

Up to the end of January, £8.6 million has been spent out of a total planned budget of £10 million from the 2023-24 budget.

Everyone agrees that we need to vastly improve people’s experiences of accessing and delivering social care in Scotland. However, the Scottish National Party’s plan to spend as much as £2.2 billion to stick the words “Scottish national” in front of our care service is not the answer. The reality is that councils cannot afford to take on the financial cost of implementing a national care service. They need fair funding from the Government, which it has refused to deliver year on year. As with the roll-out of free childcare, is the Scottish Government setting up our social care service to fail?

There are two points. We are engaging constructively with partners and a significant reduction in costs has been projected. We will continue to look at all opportunities to lower costs and maximise finance and resource to the front line. However, no Conservative can come to the chamber and start criticising the Government on the fiscal settlement for local government. When the member wants to cut public spending by £1.5 billion through a tax cut that would disproportionately benefit the best-off in society, that is simply not a consistent position, and the people of Scotland can see right through it.

The latest financial memorandum for the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill shows a cost range of up to 50 per cent. Given that we will vote on the bill in a matter of weeks, will we know the final cost before we vote?

As the member will appreciate, significant work on the bill has been undertaken by the Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport, and that work is continuing ahead of stage 2. The minister is committed to continuing to engage with members to provide as much information as possible to Parliament ahead of that consideration.