SNP's scandalous failings over long NHS waits in Scotland exposed by progress in England
The SNP’s lack of decisive action to address the NHS’s problems is writ large in the numbers of patients waiting for more than two or even three years for treatment
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In his resignation speech, Keir Starmer hailed “the fastest fall in NHS waiting lists for 17 years” as one of his government’s achievements.
According to the latest NHS England figures, just 191 people had been waiting more than two years for treatment. The ‘public data gateway’ doesn’t appear to record how many patients had been waiting more than three years south of the Border, but then they may not need to.
In Scotland, however, things are rather different with, as of the end of May, 616 people waiting for more than three years or, in health service parlance, 156 weeks. Whichever way you express it, this is a scandalously long time to wait.
As for those waiting more than two years, the good news is that the total in Scotland fell, slightly, compared to the previous month. The bad news is that there were a staggering 2,268 patients in this position.
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Particularly cruel
While different statistical methodologies hamper direct comparisons, given Scotland’s much lower population, it’s clear English hospitals are outperforming Scotland’s in this key area and others, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies recently concluded. Being forced to live with an unaddressed medical condition for years on end seems particularly cruel.
The health service was one area where Starmer’s lacklustre government was prepared to be bold almost from the outset, deciding to scrap NHS England and about 200 other health-related quangos – an utterly ridiculous number. At the time, the then Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the NHS needed “more doers and fewer checkers”. Quite.
The SNP show few signs of similarly decisive action. Drop-in GP clinics, the party’s latest ‘big idea’, appear to be being rolled out with the urgency of the dualling of the A9.
Dr Iain Kennedy, chair of doctors union BMA Scotland, said: “The continuation of challenges for NHS Scotland in delivering timely treatments will be of no surprise to the many patients who are languishing on waiting lists or being forced to pay for private care, and it is simply unacceptable thousands are having to wait longer than one year – or in the worst cases even longer.”
He called for SNP ministers to “urgently set out... a comprehensive plan for the future of the NHS”. Shamefully, despite the NHS being in a state of crisis for years – stuck on its own grim ‘waiting list’ – we still don’t have one. Do they even care?
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