Meeting of the Parliament 16 January 2025
I am very grateful to Neil Gray for that response and will certainly write to him. I have also written to him in the past couple of days to invite him to come to the Borders to thank the hard-working front-line staff and to see what more can be done to improve the terrible outcomes that we are seeing in the Borders, an issue that was covered last night on the “Representing Border” programme on ITV Borders.
Only 58 per cent of patients are seen within the four-hour target. Those figures are the worst on record since 2007 and the third worst in Scotland, and Neil Gray knows that. I put on the record that that is not caused by the influx of flu patients, because those figures are from November and so are not about that.
In the brief time that I have, I will cover the financial situation of health boards across Scotland. We received an email earlier saying that NHS Grampian is going into stage 3 of the intervention framework. In my constituency, the financial situation of NHS Borders is critical, and the cabinet secretary knows that. In just two years, the deficit has doubled to £33.6 million. The board has been at level 3 since 2021, but what support has the SNP Government offered? In my opinion, it has put the board under further strain by asking it not only to balance the books but to make cuts at the same time. Ironically, one of the cuts that has been outlined is a 10 per cent reduction to a workforce that is already struggling to cope with demand.
Wait until you hear these figures. In the past four years, NHS Borders has lost 10,000 working days every year to staff absences related to mental health. I have brought that figure to the chamber before—it is unbelievable. The staff who are carrying the burden
“are running out of goodwill.”
That is a direct quote from the chief executive, Peter Moore. Even when NHS Borders manages to achieve financial balance, it will still have to pay back outstanding brokerage, which may have reached a staggering £100 million by March 2027.
I realise that we are short of time. There is so much more that we need to do, and I would like the cabinet secretary to come to the Borders to meet the hard-working staff.
17:36