Meeting of the Parliament 03 March 2026 [Draft]
I declare an interest, in that my wife is a practising GP with the national health service.
I thank Jackie Baillie for bringing this important debate to the chamber. We had a bit of back and forth with Labour’s business manager about the content of the motion, but that was not about what the motion said; it was about how we can ensure that we deliver the best for our staff, as well as the patients.
As I always do when talking about the NHS, I start by acknowledging that, as has been said already, there are some amazing staff doing incredible jobs. In particular, I pay tribute to the staff in Dr Gray’s hospital and Aberdeen royal infirmary in my region. The NHS is a sprawling organisation, and things go wrong sometimes. It is important that, when things go wrong, managers are on top of that and try to get things right. However, I recognise that, every day, staff on the ground are doing incredible work.
The main reason why I wanted to speak in the debate and was keen to support the motion is because it feels like, every day, I am having more and more conversations with constituents—particularly in Grampian, but also across the Highlands and Islands—about ambulance waiting times and ambulances stacking outside hospitals. I believe that NHS Grampian is still among the worst in Scotland in that regard. The briefing that we were given by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine told us that the issue is caused not by demand but by problems with flow through the hospital—again, that has been mentioned in the debate.
I am not here to lay blame, but at the heart of our NHS are people who are often in very vulnerable circumstances, and they look to the Government to make effective change. What they are saying to me is that they are not seeing that change.
I know that community hospitals have shut. I was on the integration joint board in Moray when some were shut down in that area, and I disagreed with the move then. A few weeks ago in the chamber, I asked the cabinet secretary when we were going to get more beds in Grampian, because a lack of beds has an impact on the ability to get patients through accident and emergency. If we can get more people out of A and E and into beds, we can stop ambulances stacking outside. However, he did not really answer that question, so I am asking it again today. Given all the money that is being spent, NHS Grampian must get more beds in Aberdeen royal infirmary and in Dr Gray’s hospital. That is of critical importance if we are to reduce waiting times.
We also need to think again about community hospitals. If it is true that we cannot get care packages in place and that, despite the desire for care in the community, that approach is not working, we will have to find another solution that gets people out of acute beds and into community settings, which will allow a better throughput in our major hospitals.
I want to address the issue of minor injuries. After the Covid pandemic, almost suddenly, and without much consultation, NHS Grampian shut down its minor injuries units across the north-east of Scotland. There were widespread questions from a lot of communities about why that happened, because surely those units were taking some of the demand off the acute A and E settings.
What I am trying to say in all of this is that A and E departments are critically important in life-and-death situations for people across Scotland, and particularly in rural areas such as those in my neck of the woods in Moray and across the north-east, and I want them to work well for staff and for patients. At the moment, we have a lot of patients in corridor care, and that is not good enough. We need the Government to deliver, and, in the next session of Parliament, we will have to make that change.