TWO former Scottish health ministers lent support today to a campaign to end zero-hours contracts across the understaffed social care sector.

Alex Neil of the SNP and Labour’s Malcolm Chisholm co-signed a letter from campaign group Zero Hours Justice calling for this type of “insecure and low-paid work” to be outlawed. 

They argued that the SNP administration’s National Care Service Bill, currently going through Holyrood, should be used to ban the widely condemned practice, which frees bosses of any obligation to provide minimum working hours.

The campaign group warned that about 74,000 people north of the border are in this type of employment, with 20 per cent of them in the health and social care sector.

Mr Neil, who was health and well-being secretary from 2012 to 2014, said: “Social care staffing shortages are leaving patients stuck in hospital taking up much-needed beds when they should be recovering at home with social care support.

“Zero-hours contracts are a barrier to people working in the care system and should be banned.”

Mr Chisholm, health and community care minister from 2001 to 2004, stressed that the sector’s staff, who “performed heroically during the Covid pandemic, deserve to be treated with dignity and respect via a secure contract, fair pay and decent working conditions.”

Scottish Social Care Minister Kevin Stewart claimed that work is under way to tackle the issue.

He said: “The Scottish government firmly opposes the inappropriate use of zero-hours contracts and other non-standard types of employment. 

“Companies bidding to win a government contract are evaluated on their fair working practices. This includes the inappropriate use of zero-hours contracts and this will be extended to the national care service.”