Meeting of the Parliament 04 February 2015
It is clear that Mr Swinney is once again looking to protect the front line, despite the austerity measures that are being imposed on Scotland. The additional money for the health service is welcome.
Let us be clear: the national health service is a vital service that all of us will rely on at some stage in our lives. It is therefore important to protect investment in it. The Scottish Government’s spending on the health service is going above £12 billion, and the revenue budget is being protected. In my area of north-east Scotland, there is welcome news for NHS Grampian as a result of that.
The way to test public opinion about how the national health service is operating is to look at patient satisfaction with it. We are seeing high levels of patient satisfaction with the health service as a whole and with accident and emergency services. In particular, the patient satisfaction levels for accident and emergency services are above those of England and Wales. We see a strong record for the health service that is being bolstered by the investment that Mr Swinney is putting in.
The Labour Party stands up and calls for a £100 million front-line fund, set against a £12 billion-plus budget. The money that is being invested in the health service is front-line funding. It is there to fund the front-line services on which people rely.
I do not seek to diminish the individual cases that many of us deal with as politicians. We receive cases of people in our constituencies for whom, for whatever reason, the health service has not performed to the standard that we would expect it to. That will not change, irrespective of the funding levels that are thrown at the health service, because it is a human organisation, and in human organisations errors will occur. The key thing is to ensure that, for the overwhelming majority of people who go through our health service, the support is there to ensure that they get the best treatment that we can give them. That is what the Government seeks to do.