'Scrapping' National Care service is typical of SNP’s track record of overpromising and underdelivering

The BBC – and many others – informed us that ministers had scrapped a “flagship plan” after MSPs were told the much-vaunted reform would not proceed.

But this was not entirely correct. For a plan to be scrapped, it needs to exist in the first place.

The truth is that there has never been a “plan” for a National Care Service. Rather, it was an idea that didn’t develop beyond the promise of its establishment. It wasn’t a policy, it was a press release.

We have known for several months, now, that the proposals for an NCS were a mess. Local authorities and trade unions withdrew support while a number of health boards and care providers expressed grave concerns over the deliverability of a viable service.

How different things were in Nicola Sturgeon’s world back in 2021 when, as First Minister, she announced that an NCS would become a reality. This, she said, would be the most ambitious reform since the dawn of devolution in 1999.

Sturgeon was, of course, given to making undeliverable promises. After all, she did spend the best part of a decade promising a second referendum she couldn’t run.

But, while Sturgeon clearly hadn’t thought through how a new National Care Service might be established and operate, the fundamental idea was – and remains – a good one.

The National Health Service is in the deepest crisis of its existence, with waiting times stretching to unacceptable lengths and hospitals routinely overcrowded. Scarcely a week passes without senior medics speaking out about the parlous state of the service.

And, while ministers might insist they’re tackling existing problems, the truth is that the NHS continues to decline.

When the National Health Service was established after the Second World War, life expectancy hovered around the mid-60s. Today, it’s around 80. And that’s only going to increase as medical science progresses.

Over the same period, Scotland’s population has risen from just over five million to around five and a half.

Inevitably, a growing population – many of whom stubbornly insist on getting old – means the demands on the NHS today are greater than they were almost 80 years ago.

Despite this obvious truth, successive governments at both Holyrood and Westminster have failed to properly invest in the health service.

Instead, we’ve heard meaningless promises about treatment timescales and watched as the NHS crumbled.

Scotland’s changing demographic means the health service is currently caring for people in hospitals who are there solely because there is no established infrastructure that would allow them to return home.

A National Care Service would mean freeing up NHS staff – currently looking after long-term patients who need personal support – to deal with acute conditions and emergencies.

Farcically, even though the NCS will not be established, social care minister Maree Todd still plans to push the National Care Service Bill through the parliamentary process.

Could anything be more emblematic of the SNP’s track record of overpromising and underdelivering than the creation of a National Care Service Act that doesn’t establish a National Care Service?

Inevitably, it is not – so far as the SNP is concerned, anyway – its fault that the idea of an NCS has come to nothing.

Announcing that the service would not be set up, Todd told MSPs the Scottish Government didn’t have the support it needed at Holyrood to make an NCS a reality.

Todd’s version of events is that opposition parties stood in the way of “the most ambitious reform” in Holyrood history. But, had the SNP’s opponents got behind the bill, then they’d have been complicit in failure.

Since Nicola Sturgeon proposed an NCS, more than £27 million of public money has been wasted on it. All that money spent and ministers couldn’t even come up with a basic plan for a new service.

Straight-faced, Todd told MSPs she wished to reassure people that she remained committed to the ambitions of the National Care Service. Well, isn’t that just grand? No, we can’t have an NCS but the minister responsible would like one.

Last November, on the eve of a Holyrood debate on the NCS, First Minister John Swinney announced that more time was needed to consider the views of interested parties in order to “get the proposals right”. At the time, health secretary Neil Gray was adamant that the proposals for the NCS had been “delayed, not scrapped”.

This may have satisfied the finger-counting drones on the SNP backbenches but nobody who has been paying the slightest bit of attention to this miserable saga could have taken Gray seriously.

Because of the Scottish Government’s infuriating insistence on arguing black is white, it insists all is well.

“The National Care Service,” said a spokesman, “has not been scrapped. As the Minister for Social Care made clear, these proposals will deliver a National Care Service that improves the experience of everyone who relies on social care, social work and community health in Scotland.”

This was – and I’m being generous – complete bullshit. Todd has removed the establishment of a dedicated NCS from the bill. To deny this is pathetic.

Certainly, the fact ministers have frittered away millions of pounds is a matter of some concern but more serious, I think, is the fact that for the best part of four years, politicians and medics, alike, proceeded on the basis that an NCS would, in fact, be set up.

But help is not on the way. I seriously doubt it ever was.

Under pressure over her government’s failure to deliver, former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon blurted out a proposal for a National Care Service without thinking about how to deliver it.

What a shabby way to govern.