Meeting of the Parliament 02 March 2017
I start by thanking the cabinet secretary for bringing the debate to Parliament. Labour members will support the Government motion today. There is a lot to welcome in the Scottish patient safety programme and what it has delivered for Scotland, and we should pay tribute to all the staff and management who have helped to deliver the programme and thank them for the work that they are doing on the front line to support people in our national health service.
Like Donald Cameron, I welcome the improvement in mortality rates, the reduction in hospital deaths and the very welcome reduction in hospital-acquired infections—I am sure that everyone across the chamber will want to welcome all those things.
In a moment, I will talk about some other challenges that are associated with patient safety, but I want to take the opportunity to thank not just all the staff members who are involved in the patient safety programme but staff right across the national health service, who go above and beyond in delivering care for people right round the clock and all year round, whether in primary care, acute care or social care or in specific services such as maternity and mental health services. I genuinely thank each and every one of them.
However, we have had a lot of challenges in the national health service since this session of Parliament began. There are still some severe issues around the decisions that the cabinet secretary has made, and the mismanagement of the NHS has left staff overworked, undervalued and underresourced. Although I welcome the motion and will support it, I do not think that the cabinet secretary should be patting herself on the back. She, too, should look at the genuine challenges that we face.
I welcome the fact that we are finally having a meaningful debate on the NHS in Government time. However, I hope that we can also have meaningful debates on the new health and social care delivery plan, which is a strategic approach for the NHS for years to come, on access to new medicines, on the maternity and neonatal services review or on what is happening in our social care sector, where we see continued cuts to local government budgets, meaning that there will be cuts to social care budgets, too.
The cabinet secretary mentioned service reform, and I read with interest her comments on the issue in Holyrood magazine, when she said:
“I have had opposition members sitting in the very chair that you’re sitting in and I’ve put these issues to them and they’ll sit in here and agree with me but on the floor of parliament you get into a different territory and they’ll say something entirely different.”
That is simply not true. Shona Robison is 100 per cent wrong, and she is trying—perhaps inadvertently, although I suspect not—to mislead people about service cuts. Not once has the cabinet secretary met me or any of my front-bench colleagues—I cannot speak for the other parties—in private to outline the specific service changes that she proposes. Not once has she had the courage to come to Parliament to make the case for the specific service reforms that she proposes. The only debate that we have had on service reforms was in Opposition time, when the cabinet secretary attempted to deny that any service reform proposals even existed—and on that day she even lost the vote. Will she be brave enough to come to Parliament in future to make the case for the service reforms that she supports, rather than hiding behind the health boards?
There are wider issues that impact on patient safety. It is very clear that resource is not meeting demand. How is that going to improve patient safety? Across Scotland, health boards are being held accountable for delivering improvements in healthcare and patient outcomes, but year after year they are also having to make cuts that the cabinet secretary is forcing on them. There will be cuts of more than £1 billion in the next four years. How is £1 billion of cuts going to improve patient safety?