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Meeting of the Parliament 05 December 2012

05 Dec 2012 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Health Service

McLeod, Aileen SNP South Scotland Watch on SPTV

I offer my sincere thanks to all the NHS staff who were responsible for delivering what the NHS’s chief executive described in his recently published annual report as NHS Scotland’s “best ever performance” in key areas last year. The chief executive noted that waiting times are at their lowest ever level, patient care is safer, levels of premature mortality have reduced, and patients continue to rate the care that our NHS staff provide very positively.

We are not resting on our laurels but, despite what Labour would have us believe, the NHS delivery of patient care in Scotland is overwhelmingly a good-news story. The progress that the SNP Government has made since 2007 has been striking on all the key measures. Waiting times have been reduced through the delivery of the 18-week referral-to-treatment waiting time target. There are more qualified nurses and midwives than when the SNP came into office, and Scotland has more qualified nurses and midwives per 1,000 people than is the case anywhere else in these islands.

The Government has protected the front-line NHS budget, which will continue to rise in real terms despite the substantial cuts to the Scottish budget that have been imposed from Westminster, and it has realised more than £1 billion of efficiency savings between 2008-09 and 2011-12 to be reinvested to boost front-line care for patients.

The SNP Government has made a commitment to no compulsory redundancies in the Scottish NHS—there is no such commitment in England—while taking action to ensure that our hospitals and communities have the right number and mix of available nursing staff.

Despite the challenges that our NHS faces, that is a good record, which testifies to the Government’s commitment to ensure that our public has access to the best possible universal health service, which is free at the point of need. NHS staff have worked tirelessly to deliver those important outcomes.

The protection of Scotland’s national health service and its staff against the unprecedented cuts in public spending that the United Kingdom coalition Government has imposed is a central element of the social contract that the Government has made with the people of Scotland. It is worth stressing that only the SNP was prepared to commit to protecting NHS funding ahead of the most recent election. In government, the SNP has honoured that commitment, and the Auditor General for Scotland has been able to conclude that the overall financial performance of the NHS remains strong.

My concern is not about the commitment of NHS staff to delivering the best possible care for our citizens or about the Government’s commitment to protecting NHS funding. My concern is about the policies on the NHS that other parties in the chamber are advocating—and nowhere more so than in the case of universal benefits.

We on the SNP benches are committed to keeping prescriptions free and maintaining free eye tests. Both are central aspects of the care that we offer the citizens of Scotland, and both contribute to the social justice that lies at the core of our approach to government. More important, both promote the long-term health and welfare of our citizens and, in so doing, they reduce the future costs to our health service. That is what Campbell Christie asked us to do and that is what we are doing.

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Meeting of the Parliament 05 December 2012

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