Shocking conditions at famous Scottish hospital show how politicians are betraying NHS staff

On visiting Glasgow Royal Infirmary, inspectors found a patient who had been in A&E for more than seven hours without being offered pain relief, food or drink. There were patients in the department who were “thought to have left”, “misidentified patients” and “patients falling from trollies”. "We also identified incidents where patients who were waiting in corridors had become critically unwell,” the report added, distressingly.

All this adds up to an utterly appalling picture and, in times past, the staff involved would have been in serious trouble. However, the report included a salient fact that helps explain why things were so chaotic and dangerous: the department was “often operating at over 250 per cent capacity”. It was so overcrowded there were “significant concerns” about the ability to evacuate the building safely in a fire.

In a statement, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said it recognised “some aspects of care and standards weren't what they should have been” and that it had completed nine out of 11 requirements issued by Healthcare Improvement Scotland.

It is a bland, bureaucratic statement that in no way reflects the anger, frustration and borderline despair of many NHS staff, who can see the health service collapsing in front of their eyes. They are working hard but are being let down, betrayed even, by their political masters.

When a critically injured patient arrives at A&E, the first task is to stabilise their condition. For Scotland’s elected leaders, the NHS is their patient, yet they continue to look on as its condition declines, seemingly helpless to intervene in a decisive way.

With worried patients increasingly taking out private health insurance, we are witnessing the slow death of a truly great institution. If the First Minister hasn’t been desensitised, then where is the unstoppable determination to turn things around and save the NHS? As its light begins to die, where is his rage?