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CARE workers have demanded that a national care service be set up for Wales to remove the profit motive from the sector.
Unison Cymru Wales regional secretary Jess Turner made the demand today as the public service union met local council and Welsh government decision-makers.
“The question is what do we mean when we talk about a national care service for Wales?” Ms Turner asked.
The union had invited the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) and the Association for Public Service Excellence to provide detailed analysis of how private equity firms extract profit from the system at public expense.
“We believe that the profit motive leads to corners being cut and traps thousands of women care workers and their families in poverty,” Ms Turner said.
“A national care service for Wales must address this crisis and it will relieve the huge burden on the health service.”
CICTAR’s Toby Quantrill explained that his organisation works with trade unions and carries out forensic analysis of company accounts to expose tax dodges.
“This is about industrial scale removal of money from the public sector into tax havens,” Mr Quantrill said.
Vivek Kotecha is the author of CICTAR’s report into the care sector in Britain and explained how the sector generates £515 million in profit each year, largely from the rent from properties.
“Private equity firms want to extract as much money as they can and typically hold the care homes for less than 10 years,” Mr Kotecha said.
“Two of the biggest investors in the UK are Aedifica, a Belgium real estate company, and the Universities Superannuation Scheme, which is the pension fund for colleges and universities.”
Camarthenshire County Council’s deputy chief executive Jake Morgan said his council was actively buying care homes as contracts end.
“Local government needs to be taking care homes into public ownership as it is the most cost-effective model way of running the care sector,” Mr Morgan said.
Unison had persuaded the recent Welsh Labour conference to support a national care service for Wales.
The union was also lobbying Senedd members and the Welsh government to set up a capital pot of funding for councils to take up care contracts in-house and build publicly owned care homes.
