The SNP’s fifth NHS recovery plan in less than four years is failing patients and staff

Looking back at that speech, it seems like a very different world – and not just because she did the broadcast from her conservatory.

The then-SNP leader promised a “serious programme for serious times” that would be “transformational” for the NHS, at a time when staff were still risking their lives in the battle against Covid-19.

No one has ever doubted Sturgeon’s instincts for a headline, and indeed it was what a pandemic-weary population wanted to hear. But five years on, as the Parliament dissolves, the words ring hollow.

The SNP’s fifth NHS recovery plan in less than four years is failing patients and staff – waiting lists for tests and treatment stand at over 786,000.

Long waits have become the norm across Scotland’s Emergency Departments, with people waiting more than 8 and 12 hours in A&E at its highest point on record.

And while Sturgeon praised the NHS for being “free at the point of need”, in fact the SNP has presided over a two-tier health system, where 27,000 Scots received private treatment in the first half of 2025.

Nothing shows up the gap between Sturgeon’s rhetoric and the reality of the SNP more than her pledge to create a National Care Service – an idea first put forward by Labour. Countless volunteers with experience of social care took the time to share their insights, but the SNP channelled this goodwill into a centralising mission that ignored the local realities of care.

In the end, nearly £30 millon was wasted on a failed Bill that alienated stakeholders and didn’t pay for a single extra care package. Meanwhile, waits for social care assessments for care have risen 26 percent compared to the same time last year.

Healthy life expectancy is decreasing, cancer mortality is increasing, and the design of Sturgeon’s flagship superhospital, the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, was found to have contributed to the spread of infections that killed at least seven patients.

In her speech, Sturgeon pledged to work towards “a better country and a better world”. Sadly, five years later, Scotland is a world leader in all the wrong things, and the SNP looks less like a party of change and more the enforcers of a rancid status quo.

Not only is our NHS on life support, but our ferry network is creaking at the seams, and our once-admired schools are slipping in the international league tables.

As for Sturgeon herself, just two years after that speech, she had resigned. No one embodies the SNP’s managed decline more than her eventual successor, John Swinney, who has been at the heart of the SNP government from the start.

It is not that I disagree with Sturgeon’s ambition for the NHS, but it is patently clear that the SNP cannot deliver it.

A Scottish Labour government will fix the SNP’s mess and get the basics right and deliver a brighter future for the country. Parliament may be over, but the election campaign is just beginning. On May 7th you can vote for a Scottish Labour government that delivers on its promises and takes Scotland in a new direction.