Hansard

Scotland saw in the new year with accident and emergency departments in utter disarray as thousands of people—the sick and the injured—experienced long and dangerous waits. Only yesterday, we learned that, in the first week of 2024, only 59.4 per cent of patients were seen within four hours. Indeed, in Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth university hospital, the figure was 31.1 per cent, with more than 1,200 people waiting longer.

It may be a new year, but nothing has changed. The crisis in the NHS and social care continues, and the response of the Scottish National Party is that there is nothing to see here. It is business as usual from the SNP, and the NHS and its hard-working staff remain at breaking point. Almost one in six Scots are stuck on a waiting list. That is 860,000 people, and 80,000 are waiting for over a year.

We all remember Humza Yousaf’s pledge in July 2022 to eliminate completely the longest waits in planned care. Let us have a look at how that is going. Two-year waits for out-patients were to be ended by August 2022. That failed. Eighteen-month waits for out-patients were to be eliminated by December 2022. That failed. One-year waits for out-patients were to be eliminated by March 2023. That failed.

In-patient activity is not much better. Two-year waits for in-patients were to be eliminated by September 2022. Guess what—that failed. Eighteen-month waits for in-patients were to be eliminated by September 2023. That failed, too. One-year waits for in-patients are to be ended by September 2024. On the basis of current delivery, I suspect that that will be a fail, too.

I know that SNP members do not like hearing it, but the facts are plain for everybody to see. The SNP promised to end long waits and it failed utterly. I repeat that almost one in six Scots are waiting for tests and treatment, which has real consequences. I have a constituent who works in theatre at the Golden Jubilee hospital. She has been on the waiting list for three years, but NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde will not let her have her operation at the Jubilee. She is assisting people from other health board areas who have been waiting for as long as a year, but that is still two years less than her. She is no further forward, and her knee is now bone on bone. Should she take sick leave from the NHS, or will the cabinet secretary ensure that she has her operation? Successive SNP health secretaries—Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf and Michael Matheson—have simply failed to tackle the workforce pressures, and we have 6,700 medical vacancies in our NHS.

The current health secretary is distracted by personal scandals and has failed miserably to deliver for the NHS. Let us take, for example, the flagship national treatment centres—the cornerstone of the SNP’s NHS recovery plan. Many of those new centres were supposed to clear the waiting list backlog by 2026, but they have been delayed. Some might not proceed at all. Officials advised Humza Yousaf against citing figures on the additional capacity that national treatment centres would deliver because

“projections included in the NHS recovery plan have dropped significantly”.

The promise of 1,500 additional staff by 2026 is unlikely to be met, and some boards are experiencing recruitment challenges in relation to staffing. A cabinet secretary briefing from 8 March 2023 revealed that there was no revenue funding source for the national treatment centres that are not yet in construction and that the remaining programme is “not affordable” on the basis of the current capital spending review. National treatment centres have been delayed in NHS Grampian and NHS Tayside, and NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Ayrshire and Arran do not even have the full business case that is required to get the process started. In addition, what about the Edinburgh eye pavilion?

The SNP will not tell us what will be ditched until March—or possibly May—because it does not want scrutiny of the capital programme alongside the budget. The truth is that those centres will not be delivered on time, and some might not be delivered at all. The SNP’s recovery plan is simply not worth the paper that it is written on. All that we have are yet more broken promises from a party that has run out of ideas.

The Scottish Government is always keen to blame the pandemic. Of course, the pandemic happened, but the truth is that the NHS was in crisis long before Covid-19.

Finally, I will address the SNP’s latest promise on extra investment. We heard from the cabinet secretary that the Government is going to reduce waiting lists by 100,000 in two years’ time. First, what happens to the other 700,000 people who are waiting? Many patients and NHS staff will also rightly ask why they should have any faith left in this Government, after all its previous broken promises.

Secondly, let me tell members how it is being paid for. The SNP assumes that there will be a Labour Government in Westminster that delivers extra NHS funding to Scotland. Yes, that is right—even the SNP Government knows that we need a UK Labour Government for its plans to come to fruition.

The people of Scotland have been left high and dry by an SNP Government that is mired in scandal after scandal and that is more interested in playing fantasy politics than in dealing with the crisis in our NHS. Enough is enough—the SNP Government must prioritise tackling the NHS crisis before more lives are lost.

I move,

That the Parliament is alarmed that almost one in six people in Scotland are languishing on NHS waiting lists for tests or treatment; notes that the Scottish Government has failed to meet its own target, set out in July 2022 by the current First Minister, to eliminate the longest waits in planned care, with a staggering 80,000 people currently waiting over a year to be seen; recognises that the Scottish National Party’s flagship network of National Treatment Centres has been beset by delays; is concerned that the NHS is facing a workforce crisis, with 6,800 NHS vacancies that are unfilled, while agency costs have rocketed in recent years, and calls on the Scottish Ministers to set out a clear plan and timetable for when all long waits for planned care will be eradicated, and provide an update on the timescales and final costs for all the promised National Treatment Centres.