Many problems in social care in and around private sector centre around the failures of organisations to recruit and train staff appropriately. The dementia strategy is only one element of ensuring care is appropriate in both hospital and community settings, and that patients are treated with respect and the dignity they deserve. Not withstanding the fact that most of these services are purchased on behalf of either NHS scotland and local authorities and the majority of staff working in the care industry are often: (1) women (2) have unpaid caring commitments such as children or elderly relatives themselves (c) in poverty despite being in work (4) part time. Surely the large city councils in Scotland despite the squeeze on the public purse and NHS when commissioning should ensure that as part of the arms length approach to nursing and social care that staff are paid a living wage. This industry has large recruitment issues such as high turnover, and if companies paid the living wage it perhaps would go some way to address this and ensure adequate staffing with the appropriate knowledge and skills are employed. Most companies in the private sector do not recognise that the staff that are employed on basic salary despite giving up weekends and working unsocial hours with the only recognition of this fact being on 8 public holidays a year where staff are paid an unsocial hrs bonus and also a high number are on zero contracts.

It matters because the current government uses this to alter the true unemployment figures, the fact that it causes massive upheaval financial and health related does not seem to matter. Stop! Demonising the poor and vulnerable with your media propaganda, we all know who the real villains in this country are, I have yet to see a program about Hedge Fund trading in the capital. I am a unemployed teacher who was sanctioned at Christmas for 4 weeks (which is standard practice now) I won my case and they did not even turn up to the court so i could challenge their decision. I have been in the local paper about my story and on the local radio, (The News Guardian) they may be the government but that does not give them the right to destroy people’s lives to win votes.

The introduction of fees into the Employment Tribunal system has reduced the access to justice of many deserving people. The large reduction in claims, as shown by official statistics, is not mainly, as suggested, the elimination of ‘vexatious’ litigation but rather the actual prevention of access to justice of vulnerable persons. In a civilised society this is simply unacceptable and must stop at once. It is against ‘natural justice’. We ask that this divisive decision be reversed by removing fees, thus restoring traditional ‘fair play’ into the tribunal system.