I don’t must inform you how unbelievable the individuals who work for the NHS are.
We noticed their dedication in the course of the pandemic; their staggering bravery within the face of a lethal virus which gripped the globe, their resilience, their care, their humanity.
Having labored within the well being service for nearly a decade, I do know my colleagues and associates are, no doubt, the perfect of us.
So, when First Minister John Swinney mentioned that Scotland’s Nationwide Well being Service ought to be protected in any respect prices on the finish of final month, he was proper.
But his apparently noble assertion has right this moment been laid naked as one in every of intense hypocrisy, piled on high of inexcusable incompetence.
Because the Mail on Sunday’s analysis reveals, removed from eschewing privatisation, the SNP has embraced it – committing a unprecedented £850million of public cash to attempt to patch up the harm they’ve inflicted on our treasured Nationwide Well being Service.
Dr Sandesh Gulhane has hit out at hypocrisy of the SNP over the NHS
The double whammy of the SNP’s dire workforce planning and the failure of Humza Yousaf’s flimsy restoration plan has left our NHS in everlasting disaster mode.
With the height winter interval behind us, we ought to be seeing vital enhancements. However because of the SNP’s mismanagement we’re not. Greater than 840,000 Scots are languishing on an NHS ready listing. Most cancers targets haven’t been met for greater than 12 years.
Scotland has, by far, the worst drug loss of life figures in Europe. Its life expectancy is the bottom of any area or nation within the UK, decrease than it was 10 years in the past.
Waits for adolescent psychological well being companies have elevated.
Even ‘blue mild’ companies have worsened, with longer ambulance response occasions, whereas sufferers are routinely backed up and handled in corridors, and even automotive parks, placing them and employees in danger.
Sufferers have been recorded ready for greater than 2,100 days for reconstructive surgical procedure, greater than 1,500 days for restorative dentistry and greater than 1,450 days for orthopaedic surgical procedure.
These figures can solely be described as a nationwide scandal and have led to a different occasion of creeping privatisation, fully right down to the SNP’s mismanagement and misplaced priorities.
It’s no surprise, then, so many Scots now really feel they haven’t any possibility however to pay out of their hard-earned financial savings for personal healthcare.
Between 2019 and final 12 months, the quantity turning to personal suppliers virtually doubled, to 19,000.
And, as such, we’re in very actual hazard of making a two-tiered well being system, the place those that pays are more and more turning to personal healthcare to entry therapy.
Those that can not are left ready on a deteriorating NHS, hoping they may get the identical care. Is that the NHS Mr Swinney needs to guard? As a result of that’s a direct results of the SNP’s selections.
Many Scots who can not discover an NHS dentist, receive a GP appointment or, most terrifying of all, know that the delay they may face for most cancers therapy may very well be life-threatening, now really feel they should pay to obtain therapy they deserve and will count on as a matter in fact.
This can be a consequence of the SNP’s failure to plan forward, significantly in relation to staffing. Cuts to the variety of medical and dental college students have led to the scarcity of medical doctors, nurses and dentists.
The SNP’s imposition of taxes larger than another a part of the UK compound the issue by making it troublesome to recruit and retain senior employees in Scotland – some extent the British Medical Affiliation and the British Dental Affiliation are more and more elevating.
This abysmal workforce planning has led to a different privatisation component within the SNP’s administration of our NHS – the variety of company staff and non permanent contractors now required to plug the gaps in provision.
The Scottish Authorities is now spending effectively over half a billion kilos a 12 months on company employees alone.
In the meantime, there are nursing vacancies within the majority of care properties, and a latest Royal School of Nursing survey urged that 60 per cent of nurses have been contemplating, or actively planning, to go away their roles.
That’s an alarming, however comprehensible, response to the stress below which devoted frontline NHS employees should work.
Conservative governments have elevated UK NHS spending each single 12 months, and we have now by no means argued for privatisation.
However the UK Authorities’s place is irrelevant in relation to Scotland’s NHS, which is fully devolved and has been the only real duty of the SNP for the previous 17 years.
Issues and shortcomings in its administration and operation are a results of selections made by successive SNP well being secretaries, and don’t have anything to do with Westminster.
Sadly, the SNP’s stewardship of our NHS has been abysmal.
Regardless of their rhetoric, since 2007 they’ve did not match will increase in spending according to the opposite elements of the UK – regardless of having been given the funds to take action.
Because of this, Scotland’s NHS is comparatively underfunded in contrast with the remainder of the UK, because the Nationalists diverted cash to different coverage areas.
But the SNP, for all their griping, grievance-mongering and invective, don’t have anything to supply as an answer to the disaster they’ve manufactured.
As an alternative of sensible measures to deal with what’s now a nationwide emergency, they’re producing nothing however alarmism and rhetoric.
Scotland’s NHS, and sufferers, deserve higher. That’s why the Scottish Conservatives this 12 months laid out a sequence of proposals for a contemporary, environment friendly, native NHS.
We set out detailed plans to extend capability, cut back inefficiency, enhance accessibility, and catch illness at an earlier stage.
Our plans embody the availability of 1,000 extra GPs, and a nationwide assure that sufferers might get a health care provider’s appointment inside every week.
Standardising finest apply to extend the numbers of procedures that may be undertaken in the identical day, bringing down ready occasions.
A 24/7 digital well being service that might give sufferers simpler entry to their very own data.
Higher circumstances for employees and a correct workforce plan that would scale back the danger of burnout and help devoted NHS staff.
And a brand new private contract with the NHS that might encourage more healthy selections and deal with threats earlier than they turn into a burden on the healthcare system.
Not like the SNP, we plan to do all of that throughout the present NHS funds, whereas sticking to its founding rules, making certain it’s going to at all times stay free on the level of use, and supply the therapy Scots ought to count on as their proper.
The SNP’s file in authorities is one in every of failure in virtually each division.
However nowhere has it been extra apparent or impactful than in our NHS – at large value to those that work in it, and those that depend on its companies.
But John Swinney’s authorities has produced not a single constructive proposal for restoration.
As an alternative, with none basis in any respect, SNP ministers have accused their opponents of the very factor that they’ve covertly relied on to masks their failures.
The Scottish Conservatives have real options. And in key seats throughout the nation, solely a vote for us can dislodge the SNP, and start the journey to restoration.
