Labour's NHS app for England shows how SNP is failing patients in Scotland
The SNP is out of ideas about how to fix the health service as the vision of Labour’s ten-year plan highlights
It’s 2035, and Linda and Jane live on either side of the Scotland-England border, just ten miles apart. Both women have hearing problems, but Linda in Berwick-upon-Tweed can self-refer herself to an audiology specialist with a few swipes on her mobile phone.
Jane, in Eyemouth, is still waiting at 8am every morning to call the GP in the hope that someday soon she will actually get through and book an appointment – something that is not easy given her hearing loss.
Linda can pull up her medical history on her phone in less time than it takes to find a picture of her grandson. When Jane finally gets a referral to a specialist, she has to try to remember what she already told the GP and repeat her story again.
This is the future if the UK Labour government’s plans for NHS England go ahead, while Scotland remains stuck with the SNP status quo.
Weight-loss drugs for all
Last week, Wes Streeting launched the ten-year plan for NHS England, an upgrade of the NHS for the digital age, including a Neighbourhood Health Service, giving patients the power to reward the best healthcare teams, and ensuring weight-loss vaccinations are available to those who need them most, not just those who can afford them.
At the heart of the plan is the NHS app which will be central to how patients in England order prescriptions, book appointments and monitor their health. At a time when we use our phones for everything from checking into flights to banking, thinking seriously about an NHS app is long overdue.
In Scotland, the SNP also pledged to introduce an app in 2021 – but as the dotcom bubble proved all those years ago, jumping on the latest digital bandwagon is not itself a recipe for success.
The NHS England ten-year plan includes detailed plans for how the app will be structured around the needs of the patient, including releasing more data so patients can compare the performance of providers, and the creation of a single patient record, held securely, which allows patients to access their medical history.
NHS just a slogan to SNP
In Scotland, by contrast, the SNP downgraded the NHS app to a pilot in Lanarkshire, and last month it was revealed it was only going to be available to dermatology patients.
The SNP thinks the NHS is a slogan – Labour is focused on delivery. Between July 2024 and March 2025, the UK Labour government reduced long waits over 18 months in NHS England by 57 per cent. In Scotland, over the same period, the number of waits over 18 months increased by 26 per cent.
Scotland and England’s health services are not identical – Scotland escaped the damage of the reforms by former UK Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, which makes the current malaise even less excusable – but when it comes to learning from other systems, it’s one of the closest comparisons we have.
The SNP government has been in power long enough to implement a ten-year plan twice over, yet the fact is that they are out of ideas.
Jackie Baillie is MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader and her party’s spokesperson for health
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