How to persuade SNP to get serious about Scotland's shocking NHS crisis

According to new figures, there were 2,503 cases where the ‘crew’ of an ambulance was made up of one person in 2024. This should outrage the SNP ministers, given that, in 2008, the then Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon wanted to ban emergency responders from attending incidents on their own.

Instead, a Scottish Government tried to downplay the situation, saying “ambulances are not routinely singled-crewed” and that “this only happens in exceptional circumstances”.

Echoes of Covid

Labour health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie was unimpressed. "Ambulance crew members work very hard but asking them to attend life or death situations on their own places unbearable pressure on staff,” she said. “Ambulances are running on empty – Scotland needs a change of direction, starting with our NHS.”

With admissions caused by flu increasing by 12 per cent in just a week, Gray urged people to reduce the risk of catching or spreading the virus by “good hygiene and other precautions”, getting the vaccine if eligible, and also, in an echo of the Covid lockdowns, “staying home if you have respiratory symptoms”.

Under the SNP, signs of the NHS’s decline have become alarmingly regular. It does not matter who is to blame or whether the situation is worse in another part of the UK.

Failing miserably

What matters is the ability of the health service, upon which people’s lives may depend, to cope with predictable winter flu outbreaks, respond to 999 calls promptly and effectively, and treat people in A&E within a reasonable amount of time.

Whether they like it or not, the SNP has ultimate responsibility for NHS Scotland and it is their job to find solutions to its many problems. So far, they have been failing miserably in that duty.

The only remedy is a brutal but necessary one: voters must hold their feet to the fire until they realise that the parlous state of the NHS poses an existential threat to their continued presence in government.