Meeting of the Parliament 22 January 2015
It is worrying that SNP back benchers applaud the severe situation. Last week I went through, board by board, the capital investment that our NHS needs just to keep our infrastructure up to date. Not just Glasgow is affected, as the cabinet secretary well knows, as I read out the figures last week; all over the country boards need capital investment to keep up to date and to keep our NHS fit for purpose.
According to the Royal College of General Practitioners, in NHS Highland, the large amount of spend on locum cover for rural areas shows the false economy of repeatedly underfunding general practice. The NHS in Scotland spent a record £82 million on locum doctors last year, an increase of £18 million on the previous year. The cabinet secretary really needs to look at a sustainable recruitment strategy in the NHS. That kind of misspending must stop if she is to achieve the 2020 vision for Scotland.
Investing in nurses through a mansion tax would help to develop this long-term vision. Investing in the front-line fund that we have proposed, which is based on the Government’s proposals, would free up beds, allowing hospitals to deliver better care. The most recent document reporting on the task force for seven-day services on the Scottish Government website was published in March 2014. I return to the timing of this. The document says that the timing of the task force and the frequency and duration of meetings are to be agreed. It seems today that the publication of the report is still also to be agreed.
The reality is that accident, illness and emergency do not respect a 9-to-5 working week. The cabinet secretary’s civil servants have told her that in all these papers. At the moment, with this year’s hiatus, our hospitals are expected to get by with a skeleton staff at the weekend, even since the Government recognised that that is a problem. We should be aiming higher for our NHS in the 21st century.
A front-line fund that the cabinet secretary has the money for—she still has £29 million in unallocated health consequentials—makes sense for patients and staff. The money is there to be used. We are proposing use of the £29 million unallocated consequentials from health, along with £71 million of general consequentials, to give to the fund.
I know that the cabinet secretary and her colleagues in Government have been accused of perhaps storing up cash ahead of the election, but I know that she will agree that this money should be spent when and where it can on the NHS.
The budget will be finalised in early February. It makes sense for the Scottish Government to heed Scottish Labour’s call and to implement its own plans for the seven-day service, which it has been working on.
I endorse and support the 2020 vision, but I would like it to become a reality. For that to happen, the Scottish Government must take more swift and strategic action, and it must take it now.
I move amendment S4M-12120.1, to insert at end:
“; notes that the NHS staff survey reported that 75% of Scotland’s nurses think that there are not enough of them to do the work; welcomes Scottish Labour’s commitment to fund 1,000 extra NHS nurses from a UK-wide mansion tax, and believes that patients would benefit from a ‘frontline fund’ to allow hospitals to free up capacity during evenings and weekends for a modern health service”.
14:58Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.