The Scottish government is to delay some of the processes involved in setting up a national care service in a bid to save money.

A £70m cut in spending on the NCS was one of a series of measures included in Acting Finance Secretary John Swinney's emergency budget review, aimed at freeing up £400m to cope with inflation and NHS pay deals.

The government will also pause spending in this financial year on the building of a Scottish Trauma Network, digital prescribing and IT updates, and its plans to transform the specialist genomic laboratory service. There will also be a cut in payments to GPs from the Primary Care Improvement Fund.

In Mr Swinney's statement he said the development of the NCS will be ‘re-phased’ from the spending timelines presented in the summer in the financial memorandum that was published alongside the National Care Service Bill.

That memorandum has been criticised by witnesses at two consecutive meetings of Holyrood's Finance and Public Administration Committee which has been scrutinising the costs the government says will be involved in setting up the new service – with several witnesses saying the government has substantially underestimated how much it will all cost.

This week, the chief executive of NHS Borders, Ralph Roberts, questioned whether large-scale organisational change is the right approach to be taking at a time when the NHS is struggling.

At its previous meeting, the committee convener Kenneth Gibson MSP questioned whether the entire project to create a national care service risked “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” to address issues that only affect provision in some local authority areas, describing it as “a sledgehammer to crack a nut”.

The holding back of funds for the NCS preparations comes against a backdrop of opposition political parties calling for the whole project to be abandoned.

The Scottish Conservatives social care spokesman, Craig Hoy MSP, branded the plans as “reckless and unaffordable”, while's Scottish Labour counterpart Paul O'Kane called for the bill to be paused to address “a litany of glaring problems”.

There was no detail in the budget document on what changes may be made to the timeline for introducing the new care service.

Scotland's Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care, Kevin Stewart is due to appear before the finance committee next week.

Meanwhile the cuts revealed yesterday are unlikely to be the last. Mr Swinney told parliament that the devolved administrations are anticipating a package of cuts and tax rises in the Autumn Statement now scheduled to be presented to the UK Parliament on 17 November.

Read More: NHS leader: NCS threatens smaller boards; Joint call for major National Care Service rethink; Excitement of integration "dampened" by NCS

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