Meeting of the Parliament 19 February 2020
It is clear that people in management at NHS Lothian are not feeling wholly supported or valued. That is concerning in any workplace but, in our health service, which is critically important to the health and wellbeing of Scotland, it is alarming. Failings in a health board are frequently indicative of wider issues and they should not be dismissed as being the fault of one individual.
I will not support the Scottish Government’s amendment, because it seeks to remove any reference to staff wellbeing despite the abundant evidence that NHS workers are under considerable strain. We must not ignore what front-line staff are telling us. Both the cabinet secretary and I attended the reception in the Scottish Parliament for the Royal College of Emergency Medicine a couple of weeks ago, and we were left in no doubt about the situation in emergency departments.
As Miles Briggs’s amendment points out, the Sturrock review revealed a culture of bullying at NHS Highland, and the independent inquiry into mental health services in NHS Tayside revealed that
“Some staff do not trust the organisation’s motivation, experiencing a culture of fear and blame. They see a failure of the organisation to take responsibility, and evidence of defensiveness and lack of transparency.”
There is a disturbing pattern here. As health boards struggle to meet demand and cope with staff shortages, stress and tensions increase, and it is clear that staff are too often bearing the brunt of that.
Those conditions will only worsen with the introduction of the UK Government’s post-Brexit immigration plans, which were revealed this week. The Home Secretary said that the plans are about bringing
“the brightest and the best”
to the UK and that the Government wants to
“reduce the levels of people coming to the UK with low skills.”
That devaluation of so many of our foreign-born workers is simply appalling. Historically, people who work in the care sector have been low paid and classed as low skilled, but caring for vulnerable people with multiple, complex conditions requires a particular skill set that we would do well to appreciate. Our health and social care system relies on so-called low-skilled workers, and the UK Government’s refusal to acknowledge that is short sighted at best.
I will support the Conservatives’ amendment because it makes some valuable points about workplace culture and the Sturrock review, but the Conservatives need to take a long, hard look at themselves and decide whether the best way to promote wellbeing is to devalue vital staff and worsen recruitment issues at a time when demand for NHS services has never been higher. I hope that they will work with other parties and with their Government at Westminster to lessen the impact of the new immigration rules on our health and social care services.
I am sure that staff and the public do not appreciate our NHS being used as a tool with which to score political points. We must work together constructively as a Parliament to better support our NHS workers, because they need us and we need them.
15:17