Greens commit to pay social care staff £15 per hour

The Scottish Greens will pledge a £15 per hour wage for social care workers in the party’s manifesto, its co-leader has announced.

Gillian Mackay also set out a pledge to end “precarious” contracts in a bid to improve the sector, which has been linked to high levels of delayed discharge which have clogged the health service.

Ms Mackay said there is a “fragility” at the heart of the social care sector.

She said: “The job our health and care workers do is vital and means a huge amount to service users and their families.

“We ask them to step into people’s lives at their most vulnerable moments, providing dignity, stability and compassion in a system that often falls short.

“It is emotionally and physically demanding work, but it is a sector where low pay and precarious conditions are still all too common.”

Ms Mackay added: “With high turnovers, understaffing and good people leaving the sector, there is a fragility at the heart of the system.

“What does it say about our society if the people who care for some of our most vulnerable citizens can’t afford a decent standard of living themselves?

“£15 an hour can’t be a ceiling, it has to be a minimum.

“That is why we need to ensure that everyone who uses the services receives the best possible care, and that every care worker has the resources they need and the pay and conditions they deserve.”

Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary Sandesh Gulhane said: “We value the job social care workers do and the support they provide families at their most vulnerable moments.

“There are serious problems in the sector because of the SNP’s dire workforce planning, which has seen care workers overworked and burning out at record levels.

“The Scottish Greens shamefully supported SNP budgets which made savage cuts to local council budgets – this raises serious concerns as to how they would fund this policy.”

SNP MSP Clare Haughey said: “Our social care staff provide a vital, but often very challenging service – that’s something everyone in Scotland will have seen firsthand as our loved ones receive care.

“At the budget, the SNP Scottish Government provided £175m to ensure all our adult social care staff, in both the third sector and the private sector, get the Real Living Wage.

“Our investment in adult social care alone amounts to over £1.1bn every year and it is absolutely right that we ensure as high a wage as possible for our social care staff – that’s what you get with a John Swinney government.”