Meeting of the Parliament 30 April 2025
I, too, thank my colleague, Meghan Gallacher, for securing parliamentary time to debate such an important topic.
The centralisation of neonatal intensive care is causing massive concern among clinicians. Families have said that it could be catastrophic; there has been strong criticism of the arbitrary scoring mechanism; and it means that new parents to premature and seriously ill babies, at the most vulnerable point in their lives, could—as we have heard today—have to travel miles to visit them, in such difficult circumstances. Tragically, one parent said:
“you don’t know what to expect. The family could be called in at any minute to say goodbye.”
I ask members to imagine having to travel for hours to Aberdeen, Edinburgh or Glasgow to do so.
I pay tribute to campaigners who are fighting to stop the downgrading of existing facilities. The service at Ninewells hospital in Dundee, in my region, is one of those facilities. For more than 50 years, Ninewells has had a first-class AMU—alongside midwifery unit—with neonatal intensive care as part of that offer. The unit was refurbished in 1999. The AMU means that mums have a safety net, and a psychological boost from having access to obstetric labour suites, specialists and equipment almost at their bedside. The Dundee midwifery unit is separate from the obstetric consultant unit, but it is still in the hospital, which allows for easy access to medical support if that is needed.
For years, however, there has been a centralisation of maternity services in Tayside. When the Fyfe Jamieson maternity hospital in Forfar closed in 1993, it was to be replaced by a midwifery service at the new Whitehills health and community care centre. That did not last long before it closed, and mums were sent to Montrose and Arbroath.
When the Montrose community maternity unit shut in 2016 because of a lack of staff, that was supposedly for three months, but it never reopened. Proposals for a new maternity unit that was planned for two decades were shelved in 2013. The CMU was centralised to Arbroath, and I am told that the standard of care is second to none, but it is based in a building that is more than a century old, and there is little hope of it being replaced.
Why is that relevant to Ninewells? When previous closures have taken place in Angus, it has been with the facility at Ninewells in the background, as a safety net for the most difficult births in the community. As with many of the centralised services in Tayside, specialism has come at the cost of long drives, bus journeys, ambulance trips or plain old inaccessibility for people who do not have a car.
If Ninewells loses its top status for NIC, that could lead to an insane situation in which mums with sick babies living in Dundee will be sent 66 miles away, by the A90, to Aberdeen. As most of us—and most of our constituents, including mums and fathers—know, that would involve navigating the Forfar Road and half of the Kingsway, which is often at a standstill for hours of the day. Surely resourcing NHS Tayside is the best outcome, with a focus on recruitment and retention rather than the erosion of healthcare.
Finally, if even one tragedy can be averted by having a full local NICU, why take the risk?