Criticism of the First Minister and her government is seen as being 'anti-Scottish' - Susan Dalgety

Before Covid my friend Anna led a glamourous life. As befits someone who is six foot tall with razor sharp cheekbones and piercing blue eyes, she worked as a model, an organiser of fabulous events and an expert on all things fashion.

'If we are to have an election in May, then the campaign should be about educational attainment, drug deaths and jobs - not whether we should have another divisive vote on leaving the UK, only seven years after the last one'

Today, regardless of the weather, she cycles from the home of one frail person to another, desperately keeping an eye on the clock as she rushes to fulfil her daily work rota. Anna now works in social care, swapping her high heels for trainers and her designer clothes for a plastic pinny.

“I come from a family of medics,” she says. “So I am aware of the stresses and strains of looking after people. But if you work at the top end – say a doctor – you have a nice pay cheque to look forward to, and society values your contribution.

“Society doesn’t value those of us who provide the most basic and essential care, looking after the frail and elderly in their home. I earn around £9 an hour, I had to pay for my own training and I am not paid for the time I spend travelling between patients. I really don’t think society is fully aware of the contribution we make to people’s lives, and society, or that we are treated so badly.”

A report on social care, commissioned by the Scottish Government, published earlier this month and debated in the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday, hopes to change that. The review by former health chief, Derek Feeley, recommends a national care service, similar to the National Health Service.

“We have inherited a system that gets unwarranted local variation, crisis intervention, a focus on inputs, a reliance on the market, and an undervalued workforce,” said Feeley in his argument for change.

His review was warmly welcomed by the Health Secretary, Jeane Freeman, who promised that plans for a new national care service were “moving forward”, but gave no indication of how quickly, or what the changes would mean for the workforce.

Scottish Labour, the GMB union and new campaign group, ScotlandCan, are impatient for progress, however, and all have called for a minimum wage of £15 an hour for social care staff, arguing that Scotland can no longer afford to ignore their needs.

And ScotlandCan suggests that the Feeley report could provide the mechanism to push through £15 an hour, as well as offer quality training to care staff, to encourage retention.

"We decided to focus first on Scotland's social care workers who worked on the Covid pandemic frontline last year, often on less than £10 an hour,” explains Eddie Barnes, ScotlandCan’s project manager. “Improved working conditions for them will be costly but it's something Scotland can do if it decides to make that choice."

It would also say something about how Scotland values women. The overwhelming majority of care workers are female – around 83 per cent of the workforce – and many have caring responsibilities outside of work.

Paying social care workers a decent, living wage would, as the GMB union says in their 2020 Show You Care report, “make a statement about how Scotland views the rights of low paid women and the importance of gender equality in the workforce and wider Scottish society".

But I am not holding my breath. Political debate in Scotland is no longer about ideas on how to improve society. Instead it has descended into an argument over identity.

Witness the First Minister earlier this week, when she suggested that the forthcoming Holyrood elections were all about her. The elections should go ahead so that voters can “decide whether you want me continuing to steer us through coronavirus or not".

Any criticism of the First Minister and her government, whether it is about their handling of the pandemic or their failure on key domestic policies, is seen as being “anti-Scottish” and therefore a betrayal of our country, not a valid critique of a political party’s performance.

And despite a significant public sector budget and power over almost every aspect of our daily lives, nationalists will argue that it is not a lack of political will that holds Scotland back, but our 300-year-old membership of the United Kingdom.

I have to agree with Eddie Barnes when he says that “there has been far too much talk over recent years about what Scotland can't do. We (ScotlandCan) want to shift the emphasis onto what we can achieve, right now, through devolution".

Surely the Feeley report is the place to start. How much better a society we would be if we focused our efforts on providing the best possible care for our elders, instead of arguing over whether a box of supermarket eggs should have a Saltire or a Union Jack label.

There are around one million people aged 65 years and over in Scotland. In 20 years’ time, there will be nearly one and half million, which means we will need an even bigger team of committed people like Anna to look after us as we age.

If we are to have an election in May – and I am not yet convinced it will be safe – then the campaign should be about educational attainment, drug deaths and jobs, not whether we should have another divisive vote on leaving the UK, only seven years after the last one.

And instead of it being a referendum on whether we think Nicola Sturgeon is Mother Theresa or Cruella de Vil (I fall somewhere between the two), it should be a ballot to decide our priorities as a nation.

Number one on that list should be social care. As Jeane Freeman herself said during the debate on Wednesday, “How can Scotland now not afford to?”.