Chamber and committees

The law on employment rights and duties is reserved to the UK Parliament and so the Scottish Government do not currently have the legal powers to set mandatory minimum rates of pay or a stand-alone right to take legal action to ensure this minimum hourly rate for workers providing direct adult social care, in commissioned services, is delivered.

This uplift is instead being delivered through Local Government contracts, and local commissioners have delivered funding for this uplift through a contract variation process with adult social care providers. This process is a means to ensure that providers who accepted the funding for the pay uplift contractually agreed to pass on that funding to eligible workers. In the event that funding is not passed onto the workforce to uplift pay, it will be for local areas commissioning teams to engage with providers to resolve any disputes where contractual obligations are not being met.

To support this, the Scottish Government and COSLA have set up mechanisms, through discussions with the Fair Work in Social Care Group, to establish and address any issues or exceptional delays in relation to delivering the funding for the uplift to providers and subsequently eligible workers.

We have regular communications with Scottish Care, the Coalition of Care and Support Providers Scotland (CCPS) and Trade Union representatives to discuss any concerns or questions around implementation of the uplift and have worked together to resolve these quickly.

We are currently working with key stakeholders to establish a webpage with details for members of the adult social care workforce to make contact with local commissioning teams directly if they are not receiving the £10.50 per hour rate so this can be investigated.