How SNP's failure to deliver may wreck the NHS – but save the union
Health Secretary Neil Gray’s apparent downgrading of a pledge to end NHS waiting lists of more than a year may signal the next example of the SNP failing to deliver
Dualling the A9, closing the educational attainment gap between rich and poor pupils, building a couple of ferries, meeting climate change targets, introducing a simple recycling scheme... the list of things that the SNP said they were going to do and then either failed to deliver or announced one delay after another is long.
So when SNP Finance Secretary Shona Robison said during her Budget speech in December that “because of today’s record funding” – thanks to Labour – “our health service can reduce waiting times”, the scepticism of critics was understandable.
But she then went on to make a firm and very specific commitment: “By March 2026, no one will wait longer than 12 months for a new outpatient appointment, in-patient treatment or day-case treatment.” She could not have been clearer.
A more inspiring aspiration
Fast-forward a few months to this week, and Health Secretary Neil Gray was asked if the government would still meet the pledge. “That’s our aspiration. That’s what we’re driving towards,” he said, prompting outrage from Labour and the Conservatives, long used to SNP backsliding on apparently firm commitments.
A Scottish Government spokesperson later insisted the pledge remained, so it’s possible that Gray simply misspoke. However, given the track record, it’s just as likely that he accidentally revealed things are not going so well.
And if it is now simply an “aspiration”, couldn’t they aspire to something a little bit more inspiring? Waiting a year for treatment only seems like progress because of the shambles into which the NHS has descended on the SNP’s watch. People in pain deserve so much better.
Of course, as John Swinney reiterated yesterday with the usual, increasingly tired rhetoric, the SNP’s main aspiration is independence. If only his party was actually capable of delivering a decent health service, ferries that run on time, and a slightly wider road, then perhaps more people would buy the idea that Scotland would be better off if it ran its own affairs entirely.
But unionists probably need not worry. The SNP's failure to deliver almost anything at all looks increasingly likely to apply to independence just as much as everything else.
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