Meeting of the Parliament 22 December 2022
I say at the outset that Douglas Ross’s words are wise words that come from the heart, not only that of his constituents but his own, because he has been through this situation and seen at first hand what effect it has. I feel some pity for the cabinet secretary, because it is not his problem. He has been left holding the baby, because it was his predecessor’s problem and her predecessor’s problem—that is where it all started. I know that the cabinet secretary has a lot to deal with. I also make the point that we are all after model 6 for Moray and that it has to be done as quickly as possible.
I am going to come at the issue from the other way round, from the Highland perspective, and talk about why I believe that model 4 is such a threat to the Highland service. First, we have to remember that Raigmore hospital recently had to take on all the duties of gynaecology and midwifery from Caithness, which put on a huge strain on it. About an extra 250 mothers a year come down from Caithness to Raigmore now. I think that there were only eight births in Caithness last year—not many; most of them are coming down to Raigmore, which is having to cope with that without a single extra bed.
I know that the cabinet secretary has been and looked at the facilities at Raigmore, but they are 25 or 30 years old and pretty rudimentary, if I could be so bold as to say that. In fact, if your baby is put into the special care unit there, you cannot even be taken down there on bed, if you have just delivered, because the corridors are too narrow. Also, nurses cannot work in the special care baby unit except to deliver the care, because there is no station for making notes and no ability for them to work around that.
Model 4 is being discussed, and I have looked at the plans. The £5 million that was promised by the cabinet secretary for model 4 to deliver the extra facilities will not deliver one extra bed—not one extra bed!—but Raigmore is being told that it may have to take on an extra 500 patients from Moray until model 6 is sorted out. That is a real issue, because while those 500 patients are coming to Raigmore and the facilities are being upgraded, whole services at Raigmore will have to relocate through the rest of the hospital, and there are not the facilities for that. I should not have to remind the cabinet secretary that 3,200 people are waiting for orthopaedic operations alone at Raigmore. Relocating the maternity unit to another ward in Raigmore means that operations will have to suffer, and that is just not good enough.
It also means that you will fracture the delivery of the service, because you will not be able to concentrate all the midwifery and other services that are provided in the unit in one ward. Raigmore does not have the facilities—for example, it has no way of extracting the anaesthetic gases that are used during delivery, which means not only that delivering mothers will not feel the full benefit of the gases but that the staff who are working around them will have to deal with it, and that is very dangerous for them in extended periods of treatment.
I see that the clock is ticking down, but I want to say this: cabinet secretary, you went up there. You met the clinicians, and they told you that model 4 is not safe. If somebody tells you that, you have to be really careful, because what I perceive is going to happen, cabinet secretary, is that if you push on with model 4—