Meeting of the Parliament 18 January 2023
Well, after that speech, it is clear that the cabinet secretary just does not get it. Under this health secretary, our NHS is on its knees and is facing a perpetual winter, with waiting times for A and E and cancer treatment at their worst-ever levels. That comes after years of savage SNP Government funding cuts to council budgets, and let us not forget the plans for a national care service, which would scrap local accountability and impose total ministerial control, with the cabinet secretary driving the bus.
Let us look at some of his key performance indicators for the past year. In November 2021, just 75 per cent of patients were seen in A and E within four hours, and we should remember that the target is 95 per cent. If we fast forward 12 months to November 2022, we find that the monthly figure dropped to 67 per cent, which was the worst month on record. More than 13,000 patients waited eight hours in an A and E department, which was twice as many as in the previous November, while the number of patients waiting more than half a day doubled to 5,000.
The situation is so bad that, in January last year, a patient waited more than three and a half days to be seen in A and E. Through freedom of information requests, we have discovered long waits even for people to be triaged in our A and E departments. Now, major hospitals across Scotland are so overwhelmed that they have paused non-urgent elective operations.
NHS Scotland is fantastic because it is full of fantastic hard-working and dedicated professionals. It is the cabinet secretary who is clearly underperforming and who is not providing an effective plan; rather, he has provided what can only be described as a flimsy recovery document.
What do all these numbers actually mean? Let me put it into context for everyone here and everyone who is watching at home, because these are real people. The cabinet secretary says that attendances are down. During the Christmas period, I saw an elderly patient who had significant central chest pain. Because of all the messaging around A and E and the concerns about long waits, she was too scared to go in and instead waited to see me the next morning, when I had to have her blue-lighted in to hospital. That lady has been failed by the system and by the SNP Government.
If the cabinet secretary would like further examples, I am more than happy to provide them. I have examples of children being unwell overnight while the parents were unable to get through to NHS 24; of patients having fallen and lying on the ground waiting for help; and of patients with injuries resorting to do-it-yourself measures. In the real world, where I am seeing patients, people are suffering.
In the winter time, it could be something as simple as slipping on the ice that necessitates your being seen in hospital—a Scottish hospital, which is why deflecting is simply not good enough.
What about patients with time-critical cancer referrals? Waiting times for cancer treatment are also the worst ever on record. In fact, it has been a decade since the SNP last met its target. Let us look closer at this health secretary’s stats. In the third quarter of 2022, just 74 per cent of patients started treatment within the official 62-day standard. We have shocking evidence of a patient who waited two years to start cancer treatment, and also of a six-month wait for breast cancer treatment, a seven-month wait for bowel cancer treatment, and a more than 16-month wait for prostate cancer treatment. That is for cancer.
What about children and mental health? The SNP has never met its target—never. We know that teenagers in Scotland who have been referred to child and adolescent mental health services with eating disorders, suspected attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or autism are being told to expect a two-year wait for a CAMHS appointment. Parents are being advised to go private, if they have savings, at a cost of around £1,500.
In August 2021—