Cost of free care up 11% but Holyrood saves £838m

Published on Tuesday 24 November 2009 21:51

THE cost of providing free care for the elderly in Scotland increased by 11 per cent last year, according to new Scottish Government figures.

The increase to 358 million – more than 1 per cent of the Scottish budget – has raised further questions about the burden to the taxpayer created by one of the flagship policies of devolution in the past decade.

Within this budget, the cost for free care at home almost doubled to 257m from when the policy was introduced in 2002.

A spokesman for the Taxpayers' Alliance said: "This kind of increase is extremely concerning to taxpayers, because there is a risk that the open-ended promises of politicians could have led them to exposing us to potentially bottomless bills."

But health minister Shona Robison said the policy improved the lives of 50,000 pensioners.

"We are absolutely committed to maintaining that progress and laying the foundations for Scotland's older people to receive the support they need, not only now but in the years to come," she said.

The free care figures came as the Scottish Government also revealed that it had exceeded its target of efficiency savings by more than 300m.

In 2008-9, instead of making efficiency savings of 2 per cent or 534.4m, the Scottish Government achieved 3.1 per cent savings, or 838.9m.

The savings were all spent on different services, but the amount has raised questions about the concerns raised by SNP ministers over having to find 500m in next year's budget.

Labour finance spokesman David Whitton said: "(Finance secretary] John Swinney made big play of 5 per cent being a tough target when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, announced he wanted 5 per cent savings across all departments.

"Now we find there was a fair amount of slack in Scottish budget."

A spokesman for Mr Swinney said the savings and the cuts were "unrelated."

But the Scottish Liberal Democrats have raised doubts about whether the savings are real.

They pointed to the rural affairs committee which wanted an explanation as to why "voluntary modulation", was listed as the largest efficiency in the rural affairs and environment portfolio.

The committee said it was a "good illustration of how far the Scottish Government definition of 'efficiencies' has moved from the lay person's understanding of action which achieves the same output for less input or more output for the same input."

Scottish Lib Dem finance spokesman Jeremy Purvis said: "Time after time ministers identify a department that has made savings and then simply pounce on that freed-up resource claiming it for ministers' priorities, the details of which are not given. This is bypassing the proper budget process."