Scottish fury over care cost claims

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.