Official Report search · Parliament Workbench

Chamber

Plenary, 25 Apr 2002

25 Apr 2002 · S1 · Plenary

Item of business

Primary Health Care

Scanlon, Mary Con Highlands and Islands Watch on SPTV

Mike Rumbles could not behave if he tried, but we have got used to that.

The Highlands did well out of the Arbuthnott formula, which provided additional funding to reduce inequalities in, and increase access to, health care. However, the opposite of that has happened. Many communities rightly fear the loss of their local doctor. I appreciate what the minister said about physiotherapists, ambulance teams, podiatrists and district nurses but, at the moment, Highland communities cannot see that any acceptable substitute is in place. People see that they are losing their contact with the NHS and that nothing else appropriate is being put in its place. It is not surprising that people will be canvassing the Health and Community Care Committee when it visits Inverness next week.

It is not surprising that people are worried. Waiting lists are up by 10,000 since 1999. Waiting times are up. There is a record number of blocked beds. Those things are not the responsibility of GPs but, as GPs have the only open door in the NHS, they usually find that they are the focus of people's anger and frustration. Less than 7 per cent of health spend goes to GP services. Despite the fact that 90 per cent of patient contact with the NHS occurs at the GP surgery, over the past five years the number of consultant posts has increased by 19 per cent while the number of GP posts has increased by 3 per cent.

The absence of primary care commissioning in Scotland needs to be addressed. Fundholding is needed to support local decision making and to ensure more empowerment, so that the NHS is more responsive to patients' needs.

I realise that my time is almost up, but I am pleased that Labour has reversed some of its dogma. I am pleased that it has gone back to some basic Tory principles. The Executive has not quite got there yet, but I welcome the U-turn. How will the Executive reverse the damage that has been done in the past five years?

Let me use my last few seconds to talk about primary care teams. A few weekends ago, I went out with the police in Inverness. During the evening, there was a problem at accident and emergency, when the staff could not cope with a patient. The police were called and the suicidal patient was locked in the cells. The police phoned the primary care mental health team but got no co-operation, despite there having been an attempted suicide a couple of days earlier. I was shocked that the police had to charge an attempted suicide victim with breach of the peace in order to keep the person in the cells. There was no hope of a call-out from a GP to treat a prisoner in the police cells.

Any new initiative must include not only the primary care team but the voluntary sector and the police, who often become the dumping ground for many of the NHS's problems.

I move amendment S1M-3022.3, to leave out from "applauds" to end and insert:

"notes that in order to improve primary care local health care co-operatives should be free to purchase care from the most appropriate provider, be it public, private or voluntary, and the incentives gained by the purchasing of such services should be used to underpin patient choice; further urges the Scottish Executive to continue to use private providers where they can supplement the capacity of the NHS and provide value for money, and asks the Scottish Executive to make available to patients information on alternative providers and on waiting lists and times to allow patients to exercise real choice."

Search Hansard contributions

Plenary, 25 Apr 2002

In the same item of business