THE Scottish TUC condemned the SNP government’s plans for a new national care service today, passing a string of motions damning privatised social care.

Congress agreed to fight for social work to be “a public service delivered by the public sector and accountable to democratically elected members of the community.”

Moving a motion attacking “the government’s decision to privatise the design of the NCS by contracting Price Waterhouse Cooper,” Unison delegate Lilian Macer savaged private care providers who with one hand had taken public support and Covid payments “and with the other siphoned it off to the Cayman islands.

“That’s the care service we have: a service that puts profit before people, before workers, before service users,” she charged. “Not the kind of service we want to see in Scotland.”

Ms Macer said her union had other concerns over plans for a highly centralised model that compromised local authorities’ ability to determine care needs in their areas.

Unison had written to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon asking her to reconsider her government’s approach.

Lorna Robertson of Unite moved a related motion calling for a “properly funded and publicly owned” care service that noted the Scottish National Party itself had resolved at its 2021 conference to campaign for “the profit motive to be eliminated from social care.”

Ms Robertson said the Feeley report on establishing a national care service assumed a continuing commissioning model for care with delivery by private providers.

She called for collective bargaining across social care, with minimum terms and conditions agreed including two 30-minute paid rest breaks and consistent pensions provision.

It is time to “get the private sector out of care,” she said. “No issue is more important than the quality of life of our loved ones.”

Carmen Simon of Edinburgh Trade Union Council  said social care should be provided by local authorities, and “to be effective, it is imperative those authorities are properly funded.”

And GMB Scotland called on congress to back the Fight for 15 campaign in social care, saying a £15 an hour minimum wage should be “the centrepiece of the future national care service,” as a new £10.50 rate would be “wholly insufficient in tackling the understaffing crisis.”