David Bell, an adviser to the Scottish executive who helped devise the programme, believes the cost of implementing it is likely to rise to £290m a year within 15 years, 16% more than the executive believed when it was adopted in 2001.
He claims Jack McConnell, the first minister, will have to cut budgets in other areas if he wants to continue spending at the current rate on looking after old people, or else impose new charges on the elderly.
Bell, one of the country’s top economists who is based at Stirling University, helped cost the flagship elderly care policy for Henry McLeish, McConnell’s predecessor, in 2001.
He says government actuaries provided the executive’s expert free care working group, of which he was a member, with flawed population forecasts. The figures underestimated the pace at which the elderly population was likely to grow. Population forecasts provided in 2000 stated that the over-85s population would grow to 117,000 by 2020.
Government actuaries recently revised that forecast to 142,000, 21% more than the executive expected when it decided to back free care. Forecasts for the over-75s and the over-80s have also been increased by 13% and 16% respectively.
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Costs could be pushed up still further by a shortage of adults of working age available to look after old people because higher wages may have to be offered to attract staff.
Last month The Sunday Times revealed that the cost of looking after the elderly in hospitals, nursing homes and the community could more than double to £3.4 billion within 15 years because of the country’s ageing population.
McConnell is known to have opposed the introduction of free care under his predecessor, Henry McLeish. Now that it has become a popular reality it would prove politically difficult for him to drop. The Scottish executive said it remained committed to the policy.