Meeting of the Parliament 02 March 2016
We commissioned independent scrutiny of the options. That process was established, and it has been used three times since we came to power. It is still available to help to inform major service-change considerations. The experts of the independent scrutiny panel emphatically confirmed that our position is correct. The fact that the previous Administration was prepared, notwithstanding the lack of a clear and robust evidence base, to sanction closure of those A and E units beggars belief. What would the impact have been? Since our decision to save those units, they have provided much-needed emergency capacity, and they have had some 830,000 attendances between them. We have not just maintained those departments; we have invested in and enhanced them.
I was also interested to note that Labour’s motion specifically calls for retention of emergency care services at the Vale of Leven hospital, because the A and E department there closed in 2002 under the previous Labour-led Administration. Indeed, the Scottish National Party Government ended a decade of damaging uncertainty by approving the “Vision for the Vale of Leven Hospital” in 2009, thereby securing its remaining emergency services alongside provision of local maternity services and repatriation of a number of specialties.
On Lightburn hospital, I have been clear—I said this during health portfolio question time—that there would need to be a material change to the position in 2011, when Nicola Sturgeon, as health secretary, ruled out the closing of that hospital based on the proposal that came to her.
We have continued to invest in St John’s hospital. There is a list of investments that were never made under the previous Labour Administration, and there has been lots of investment since in St John’s hospital. The independent review of paediatric services that is being undertaken across Lothian will, of course, report to NHS Lothian in due course.