'Families will have to care for elderly'

• Vulnerable pensioners can no longer rely on a "nanny state," says Douglas Yates Picture: Getty

The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA) has admitted it does not have "a clue" how the Scottish Government's policy of free personal care for the elderly can be paid for.

In an interview with Scotland on Sunday, CoSLA's health and wellbeing spokesman Douglas Yates said the rising cost of care and the bleak economic outlook meant that vulnerable pensioners can no longer rely on a "nanny state" to provide for their needs.

Instead, families will be forced to follow the example of previous generations by caring for their loved ones themselves and meeting the costs out of their own pockets as Scotland struggles to look after the rising number of old people.

Yates, the SNP deputy leader of East Renfrewshire Council, also suggested that tax rises or direct charging for care should be introduced to meet the 1.1 billion funding gap in elderly care that will open up by 2016. His stark warning represents CoSLA's most outspoken challenge yet to the populist free care policy that was introduced shortly after devolution by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, but has been embraced enthusiastically by Alex Salmond's SNP government.

"There will need to be more discussion among families about the provision of the older members of the family as time moves on," Yates said.

"I don't think there is any question about that. In some respects, you might think it's turning back the clock a little bit, a few generations, to what used to happen when people took more recognition of the family members who were elderly.

"We've become a nanny state. We've got to get away from the idea that local government or the government can do everything for everyone. It can't. Quite patently it can't so we need to take more responsibility for ourselves."

CoSLA's intervention will increase the pressure on the SNP Government to ditch the policy that currently sees an elderly person in a home receiving up to 227 a week towards nursing and personal care.

It also comes after an Independent Budget Review suggested that axing the policy would be one way of easing the strain on Scotland's finances.

When the policy was introduced in 2002, the Lab/Lib Dem administration estimated the cost of the policy would be 161 million by 2012. CoSLA now estimates that its cost will be nearer 400m by then. The number of Scots over the age of 75 is expected to rise from 393,000 now to 724,000 in 2033.

The cost of the policy has already increased dramatically with recent figures revealing that 9,570 care home residents received free personal care last year and 6,180 received free nursing care.

This represented increases of 14.6 per cent and 17.2 per cent respectively over the totals five years earlier. The cost to the council taxpayer of providing this support in 2008-9 was 102.8m, 23.4 per cent more than in 2003-4. However, by far the largest increase has occurred in the number of people receiving free care in their own homes. Over the same period, the total rose 34.4 per cent to 44,200.

This has resulted in council taxpayers spending an extra 273.3m on providing free personal care in the home last year, an increase of 112.5 per cent compared with 2003-4. Yates said: "There's just not enough money in the system as we go forward. And so that means we'll have to ask people to pay more – through taxation or through direct charges for care or maybe a combination of both."

But last night Scotland's political parties and the SNP government remained committed to the policy.

A spokesman for Finance Secretary John Swinney said: "Once we know the outcome of October's UK Comprehensive Spending Review, we will set a Scottish budget focused on protecting frontline services and economic recovery."