Meeting of the Parliament 14 January 2015
If you implement the right plans and do not cut the number of specialist grades, you will get more consultants—but you cut those grades.
The other thing that is happening, which is a scandal, is that 60 per cent of the consultants who were appointed in the past three years were appointed not on the nationally agreed contract for 7.5 clinical sessions to 2.5 non-clinical sessions but on contracts for nine clinical sessions to one non-clinical session. Nicola Sturgeon chose to ignore the issue in 2012, merely saying that that is the national contract and that it was for the boards to decide. When I raised the matter the other day, Shona Robison accused me of discouraging consultants from coming to Scotland. It is not me who is discouraging them; they are being discouraged by the cabinet secretary’s failure to order boards to follow the national contract. The matter requires examination, at the very least.
The Grampian reports to which I am sure that Richard Baker will refer indicate the damage that is done by removing the 2.5 weekly sessions that consultants used to do audit work, research, teaching, personal development and the crucial service redesign that we need. That approach is not sustainable. We will not retain consultants if the cabinet secretary insists that they remain on a 9:1 contract.
As if those decisions on medical staffing were not bad enough, the Government cut the nursing student intake by 20 per cent, against the advice of the Royal College of Nursing and Unison. In 2011, the Government also allowed the boards to cut 2,400 nursing posts—a cut that was six times greater than the level of the cuts in England. The Government also cut the midwifery student intake by 45 per cent and closed three midwifery schools with only a few months’ notice.