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Meeting of the Parliament 19 September 2012

19 Sep 2012 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Patient Care

Baillie, Jackie Lab Dumbarton Watch on SPTV

There are undoubtedly real and pressing challenges in our national health service, which are starting to have a significant impact on patient care and patient safety. I make it clear at the outset that the work that our NHS staff do is exceptional. Whether they are doctors, nurses, our Scottish Ambulance Service staff, our technicians who work behind the scenes or our porters and cleaners, we are grateful to the entire NHS family. It is our responsibility to ensure that they are adequately resourced to do their job. We are joined in the public gallery by paramedics, by Ambulance Service staff and by Mick Conroy and Harry Donaldson from the GMB, all of whom I welcome.

Last week, the Scottish National Party rearranged the deckchairs with its ministerial reshuffle, which moved the Deputy First Minister away from health at a time of crisis for the NHS. I say with all due respect to Alex Neil that she is probably the SNP’s most talented minister. Her move to run the referendum campaign shows the SNP Government’s real priorities. Separation is its first, last and only priority.

The faces can be changed, but the feel and substance remain the same. The SNP is out of touch with people’s concerns and is putting the NHS in Scotland on pause as it obsesses about the constitution. What is required is not new faces but a new focus, new ideas and a new direction.

However, I welcome the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing’s announcement about the sick kids hospital in Edinburgh, although it is of course five years later than promised and it does nothing to tackle the £130 million repairs backlog or the £1 billion backlog across Scotland. The hospital estate is crumbling on the SNP’s watch.

One thing is clear. The cabinet secretary needs to get a grip on his brief quickly, because while we are on pause, patient care continues to suffer, waiting times at accident and emergency departments continue to lengthen, nurses are losing their jobs and ambulance staff are expressing concern about patient safety.

If I was to construct a charge list for Alex Neil to tackle, here is what it would say: the NHS has fewer staff than at any time since 2007; the SNP is presiding over cuts of more than 5,500 staff, almost 2,500 of whom are nurses and midwives; and nursing and midwifery numbers are at a seven-year low. We cannot strip so many people out of the NHS without there being an impact on patient care.

Despite promises to protect the health budget, the SNP is cutting it by £319 million in real terms. That is a fact. Add to that the fact that inflation in the health service runs higher and the fact that prescribing budgets are already overspent at this point in the year, and it is clear that there is real downward pressure on the budget.

Patients are going without basic provisions, such as blankets—shame on the SNP and the First Minister that it took two of my constituents coming to the Parliament for them to recognise the problem and take action. Hospital inspections have thrown up some examples recently. In one case, at Glasgow royal infirmary, there was only one working shower—with no shower curtain—shared between 15 patients; in another, an elderly man was found sitting naked on his bed, in his own urine and with no screens around him, during visiting hours. Where is the patient care and dignity in that, cabinet secretary?

Patients themselves say that wards are understaffed and that patients are being moved around the hospital. Senior NHS managers—for goodness sake—have been fiddling the waiting list figures to meet targets, and as a consequence, patients have gone without the treatment that they needed and deserved.

In the cabinet secretary’s own backyard, NHS Lanarkshire has experienced huge and substantial difficulty in recruiting junior doctors, which has created problems at Monklands hospital, at Wishaw general hospital, in neonatal care and in general medicine. The problem has led to delays in assessing patients and reduced outpatient activity and has affected cover for patients who were booked in for elective procedures. The cabinet secretary cannot tell me that there is no impact on patient safety and patient care.

Local health services are increasingly under threat and closing, despite the SNP’s promises. The mental health ward at the Vale of Leven hospital has closed. The children’s ward at St John’s hospital shut for the summer. The maternity unit at Inverclyde royal hospital is threatened with closure. There are plans to close the children’s ward at the Royal Alexandra hospital in Paisley. The winds of change are coming. Health boards are having to reorganise services because they cannot run them on the current level of resources. Where in there is the concern for patient care?

Complaints about NHS Scotland are at a record high, but what do we expect, when the SNP cuts staffing, cuts nurses and cuts support to our hospitals? We cannot keep expecting the NHS to do more and more on less and less.

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Meeting of the Parliament 19 September 2012

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