Liberal Democrats call on Scottish Government to abolish National Care Service to close spending gap

Ms Forbes told MSPs Scotland was facing an “unprecedented cost-of-living crisis” and claimed inflation had limited the Government’s funding increases.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) warned of an estimated £3.5 billion funding gap by 2026/27.

Ms Forbes said the public sector would need to reform to become more efficient as she said reforms would focus on areas including digitalisation, the public sector estate and improving public procurement.

During a visit to independent school Kelvinside Academy in Glasgow, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said the ferry projects was a “major example” of money wasted by the Scottish Government as he called for the Government to introduce a “comprehensive public spending review”.

Mr Sarwar said: “I would not like to see cuts to public service. Instead, they need to stop Government waste, they need to spend money better and they need to grow Scotland’s economy.”

Also attending the school visit, Alex Cole-Hamilton said the issues with reduced train services “comes down to money” as he claimed there was a “yawning gulf” in public sector finance.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats leader said: “We need to abandon things like the National Care Service, which is going to cost millions of pounds in social care re-organisation. We also need to abandon or put on hold the outreach of new Scottish embassies, which is actually a vanity exercise to further independence and funnel that money into meaningful public sector pay increases.”

Mr Cole-Hamilton said projects such as ScotWind should not have been sold “at a pittance” and future offers should be handled with market knowledge as there is “massive potential for cash generation there”.

He said it was not for him to negotiate for union Aslef, but described the rail service as a “national embarrassment” which landed “squarely at the feet of the Scottish Government.”