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Scottish fury over care cost claims Scotland's councils have reacted angrily to claims that their errors will mean the cost of introducing free personal care for the elderly will never be known.

In a leaked response to a parliamentary report on community care, the Scottish executive's health department admitted it "could not establish accurately" how much more councils had spent on the policy since it was introduced in 2002 because some had failed to provide data on expenditure before that year.

But a spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities said councils had done "everything that had been asked of them" in providing information, and that personal care budgets were "still on track".

The parliament's audit committee, which published the report in March, said pressure to speedily implement the policy and councils' failure to provide data had led to inaccurate costing.

An executive spokesperson said details of the response would remain confidential until they were officially released.

It is understood that the executive has already launched a research project to examine the cost-effectiveness of the policy.