Announcement to come on future of National Care Service

When the plans were further delayed in November, First Minister John Swinney said more time was needed to consider views and “get the proposals right”.

Todd previously said she was “absolutely committed” to the plans after the latest delay was announced.

Health secretary Neil Gray said the plans had been “delayed, not scrapped”.

Rachel Cackett, chief executive of the Coalition of Care and Support Providers, said she now expected “significant” sections of the bill to be removed in the latest announcement.

She told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “The main parts of the bill were to enact the recommendations made during Covid when everyone is out clapping for social care.

“This is a bill that was meant to be about improving the support that people get in their homes and their communities every single day.

“What we have ended up with is a bill that needed work, where the right people were not spoken to at the right moments and actually now we have got into the politics of a government almost in the last year of its term trying to do a major reform, that’s never where any government wants to be.”