Meeting of the Parliament 14 June 2023
No, I do not have time.
All those numbers are, of course, people whose lives are put on hold while they wait, often in pain, to get the medical care that they need. They are people like 82-year-old Robert Stone, who has been waiting more than three years for a knee replacement. His daughter Carol Murray told me:
“He’s now lost all his dignity because of waiting so long. He is sleeping in a bed in ... his living room because he can’t access his bedroom. ... He has become a prisoner in his own home. ... He is now being treated like a dog waiting for scraps.
Where is the fairness in this? Where is the humanity in this? ... I feel like I am slowly watching my father’s demise before my eyes.”
He is one of the shocking 2,207 people who have waited for more than two years for orthopaedic surgery. Humza Yousaf pledged to end such waits by September 2022.
The creation of national treatment centres to get through the backlog and streamline the approach to diagnostics and treatment was a welcome step. It is therefore hugely disappointing that many have been delayed and that there is a funding shortfall and a lack of staffing. It took a freedom of information request from the Scottish Labour Party to get the details out of the SNP Government. We now know that the Government is unlikely to meet its commitment for national treatment centres to deliver an additional 40,000 in-patient and day-case procedures in 2025-26. The response states that
“projections included in the NHS Recovery Plan have dropped significantly”.
Plans for 1,500 additional staff by 2026—a commitment in the NHS recovery plan—are unlikely to be met, with some boards already experiencing staff recruitment challenges. In March, a briefing to the cabinet secretary revealed that there was no revenue funding source for the national treatment centres that are not yet in construction. To top it all, the remaining programme is “not affordable” on the basis of the current capital spending review.
In August 2022, the update on national treatment centres showed that five centres were classed as red, meaning that they were in danger of not being delivered until 2027, such was the limited progress being made.
Will the cabinet secretary publish the revised schedule for national treatment centres? Will he confirm whether they will all proceed and the timescale for them? Given that the NHS budget is reportedly overspent and that capital projects are being cancelled, we need transparency and we need that information.
Not content with crashing the health service, the SNP is now failing to deliver the modest recovery plan that it promised to implement. Waiting times are increasing. National treatment centres were promised but have not been delivered. Staffing targets are not being met. Ultimately, patients are being let down.
We urgently need a new recovery plan, and we need clinicians to lead that process. Clinicians and Versus Arthritis have been arguing for a recovery plan for orthopaedics—the single largest component of waiting lists—for years, but Humza Yousaf did not listen to them. Will the cabinet secretary commit to such a plan now?
SNP incompetence is threatening the very existence of our NHS. Michael Matheson must act now to support our valiant NHS staff and to undo the deadly legacy of his predecessor—Scotland’s worst-ever health minister, Humza Yousaf.
I move,
That the Parliament is deeply concerned that NHS waiting lists continue to increase to record levels, with over 779,000 patients awaiting treatment; regrets that over 18,300 patients died on NHS waiting lists in 2022, whilst the number of people in Scotland paying for private treatment has increased by 73% since before the COVID-19 pandemic; notes that the Scottish Government has failed to meet its revised national targets for tackling long waits for planned care; is concerned about the delay in rolling out the network of National Treatment Centres; recognises that the NHS is facing a workforce crisis, with over 7,000 vacancies unfilled, and agency costs spiralling to £567 million in 2022-23, and calls on the Scottish Ministers to bring forward a revised NHS Recovery Plan, in consultation with key stakeholders, to reduce long waits as a matter of urgency.
14:58