Sir Stewart Sutherland: "Following the principles of the NHS"

Ms Deacon said she could not justify paying for the personal care of the 7,000 people in residential homes who at the moment, she said, could afford to pay their own costs.

Speaking on BBC Newsnight Scotland, Sir Stewart, the principal of Edinburgh University, warned that the executive would have difficulty in "drawing the line" between what constituted personal care and nursing care.

He also warned that the executive's plans to means test the elderly would create a two-tier system of care.

Sir Stewart said: "They want to draw the line so that some care will be means tested and in order to draw that line you will need a massive bureaucracy and possibly some quite artificial definitions.

"And that bureaucracy will invasively ask someone in a state of great need where dependency is as much as they've ever had - they will ask them detailed questions about personal income and resources and so on - and I think that in itself is not a very good way to proceed."

'Assessed objectively'

Sir Stewart said every applicant should be treated in the same way.

"Our view was that to provide care for those in need at this stage in life was to follow the same principles of the national health service, that care should be free at point of delivery as the need is assessed objectively by clinicians and nurses and social workers," he said.

Labour MSP and former GP, Dr Richard Simpson, said he would press over the coming years for Sutherland to be implemented.

But he said it had not been possible this time.

"We had the chance to improve care for the elderly in their own homes or going for equity of care which was what the Sutherland report wanted. There are measures which move towards equity.

"And there are a lot of people who are going into care who should be being supported at home. The package contains an enormous number of measures which will improve elderly care at home," added Dr Simpson.

Ms Deacon said she agreed "with the principal of equity" in the report but believed the executive was taking the right approach to the needs of tens of thousands of older people across Scotland.