SNP must act over ambulances forced to queue outside hospitals for hours – Jackie Baillie
All political parties have a duty to safeguard the NHS to ensure it will be there for future generations
This week marked the 78th anniversary of the NHS. Officially launched across the UK on July 5, 1948, it was the brainchild of Labour’s Minister for Health, Nye Bevin, in the period after the Second World War.
It has since become a treasured part of our national identity, with equality and fairness at its heart, enabling everyone to get help when they need it regardless of their financial circumstances. We should be rightly proud of a Labour government having boldly created the NHS in the post-war period, and for the many millions of people it has helped since.
However, while our health service is supported by brilliant, hardworking staff, we cannot afford to allow governments to neglect it. Unfortunately, what we have witnessed during 19 years of SNP rule is a government that has failed to support our NHS by failing to respond to appeals for greater resources to help deal with increasing demands as a result of demographic changes and the Covid-19 pandemic.
SNP’s failure to deal with delayed discharge
This neglect has real-life consequences. Just this week, we learned that ambulances are getting stuck outside Scottish hospitals for as long as 18 hours.
Ambulance turnaround times tell us how long an ambulance spends outside a hospital before being deployed again. The problem is now so bad that every major hospital in Scotland has already had at least one ambulance turnaround time of more than an hour this year.
This can include cases where patients have to wait in ambulances because there are not any beds available within hospital. That is not the fault of staff. It is the fault of an SNP government that has refused to heed the warnings for years about overcrowding in our hospitals and delayed discharge, where patients who are medically fit to leave are not checked out.
Angela Constance, the newly appointed Health Secretary for Scotland, has said that “the status quo is not an option” when it comes to our health and care services.
Incredible NHS staff deserve better
I agree. However, if we are to move forward and ensure we can continue to uphold those founding principles of our NHS, Ms Constance and the Scottish Government must first acknowledge their mistakes and make better choices in the future.
Scottish Labour has previously called for action to speed up ambulance response times by introducing a 45-minute target for turnarounds to prevent vehicles being stuck in queues outside hospitals.
We have also been clear about the need to cut waiting times, tackle delayed discharge, and shift resources from hospitals into local communities so that patients can access more diagnostic tests and outpatient treatment closer to home in neighbourhood health hubs.
Our NHS is an institution that we should treasure. We have a duty to safeguard it so that it can be there for future generations. That must be a commitment we should all make, regardless of political party. It is the least that patients and our incredible staff deserve.
Jackie Baillie is MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader and her party’s spokesperson for health
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