THE Scottish government has ditched its flagship National Care Service (NCS) proposals after sustained opposition from trade unions and councils.

Plans for the service were announced in 2021 by then first minister Nicola Sturgeon as the biggest shake-up to care since the formation of the NHS in 1948, but broad support for the principle swiftly began to melt away when the Bill was first published a year later. 

Social care unions such as Unison raised concerns that it failed to tackle unmet need, enshrined and elevated the role of the profit motive in the care system, failed to deliver sectoral collective bargaining, and — alongside local government — expressed deep reservations at decision-making being removed from councils to be placed in the hands of the unelected board of a national quango.