Anas Sarwar to launch £1.3bn Labour plans for free residential care for over-65s

Scottish Labour will deliver free residential care for all over-65s in Scotland if the party is elected, Anas Sarwar is expected to tell his party’s conference today.

The plans will see almost 10,000 care home residents provided with free care at a cost of more than £400 million, while also plugging the funding gap in non-residential social care.

The move is a direct response to the SNP’s plans for a National Care Service, which would see the centralisation of care provision.

Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar has pledged to cover the cost of residential social care for elderly Scots.

Mr Sarwar is expected to tell Labour delegates: “I am proud to announce that Scottish Labour will put forward a plan to provide residential care to everyone over the 65 who needs it, free at the point of need.

“This will be the single greatest reform of the care service since the introduction of free personal care. But we don’t have to wait until 2026.

“We can take steps right now to set us on track for all care in Scotland to be free at point of need, delivering a health and care system which people can rely on their whole lives.

“A social care service based on our NHS principles. That’s our politics, Labour politics. Building the health and social care system of the future.”

Labour’s plans will cost at least £1.3 billion in total, with more than £500m pledged to cover the gap in funding for non-residential social care identified in the review of social care undertaken by Derek Feeley.

A further £412m per year would need to be found to cover residential care, and an additional £410m to raise wages for care workers to £12 per hour, with a commitment to work to raise that further to £15 per hour.

This, the party state, would be paid for through health and social care Barnett consequentials from UK Government spending.

Around £1.783bn in consequentials is expected to be received by the Scottish Government in 2022/23, with a further half a billion in 2023/24 and another half a billion in 2024/25.

It is this additional funding that would be used to allocated to cover the costs of delivering free residential care.

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