UNISON, Scotland’s largest union and the union for care workers, has today (Tuesday) lambasted the Scottish Government for failing Scotland’s most vulnerable by keeping profit in care.
Tracey Dalling, UNISON Scotland’s regional secretary, said: “The Scottish Government had an opportunity to use the National Care Service to rule out profiteering in the future provision of care and value democratically run care services in Scotland. Instead they put private investment at its core and propose to transfer thousands of care workers out of local government into an undefined organisation.”
“Private companies have a long history of failure to deliver quality public services and we sadly know from Covid that the price for unsafe and unaccountable care is simply too high. National Care Service that relies on private investment firms to deliver it, is not a National Care Service.”
UNISON supports a National Care Service that brings social care under greater democratic control, ends the fragmentation of social care and puts people before profits.
Tracey added: “The crisis-hit care sector is in urgent need of reform, and profit has no place in it. Social care should not be a commodity that can be bought up and used for profit by faceless investment vehicles.
Our public services should be run for the benefit of those who use them and the public money that funds them should remain in the system, driving up care standards and the pay and conditions of the workforce.”
ENDS
UNISON is the union for social care. We are the largest union in Scotland.
For more information on the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill:
For further information contact:
Trisha Hamilton/Danny Phillips, UNISON Scotland communications officers M: 07943 507307 / 07944 664110