A member of a Scottish government advisory group has criticised a decision to bring in a management consultancy giant to advise on the ‘design’ of a National Care Service.

PwC will receive £100,000 to advise the government on the ‘mobilisation’ of the care service, including the ‘design of project…and high-level roadmap towards delivery of design’, according to an online contract notice.

Nicola Sturgeon has described the new system as the biggest public sector reform since the creation of the NHS in 1948.

A consultation exercise is currently underway and ministers have promised the NCS will be up-and-running by 2026.

Earlier this year the Scottish Social Care Minister, Kevin Stewart, said an advisory panel of ‘real life experts’ with first-hand experience of social care would help develop the care service.

A member of the social covenant steering group told healthandcare.scot they were “astonished” the contract had been awarded without any input from the team.

They said: “So much for doing things differently and including people with lived experience as equal partners in decisions around the development of a National Care Service.”

Further parts of the project include providing an ‘outline plan for setup of agile design team’ and ‘health and social care whole-system thinking’, the online notice states.

The award of the contract was criticised by the Scottish Trades Union Congress.

STUC General Secretary Roz Foyer said: “Whilst this is only a small contract, beginnings matter. We will vigorously oppose any move towards outsourcing the vital project of creating a National Care Service to companies with a vested interest in privatised provision.”

Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said there were “serious questions” about why civil servants could not carry out the work.  

PwC received a £250,000 contract in 2020 to advise on the ‘redesign of the health and social care system’.

Rival company KPMG was awarded deals worth more than £500,000 to assist the Scottish government in learning lessons from care home deaths during the first wave, as well as a social care advisory contract. 

Colin Turbett, a member of the thinktank Common Weal’s care reform group who authored a report on the proposals, said it was “extraordinary” that the contract had been awarded before the consultation was finished.

The former social worker told healthandcare.scot: “There’s plenty of expertise in Scotland...could they not have borrowed expertise from local authorities and other public sector organisations, from people who are actually working in this every day?"

He added: “The consultation and proposals document is 137 pages but it just doesn’t look or feel like it’s been put together by anybody with any knowledge of social work or social care. Yet the questions are so prescribed that you can guess the outcomes from them. They’re not open questions, most of them, they’re very closed ones.”

A Scottish government spokesman said: “PwC have a contract to support the setup of the design authority programme management structure to support the introduction of a National Care Service, pending the findings of the consultation.

“This award is for programme set up only to help underpin our efforts in ensuring that the design, governance and structure of planning for any the National Care Service builds on best practice principles for outcome focused, person-centred design.

"The contract has been awarded through an existing national framework and offers the best balance of cost and quality.”

Read more: Review member questions cost of care reforms; NHS Scotland pays private firms £1m for covid advice; Government under fire over "social care takeover"

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