Readers' Letters: Stop agencies charging the earth for medical staff

It seems to me there is little point taking frail, complex patients out of a busy waiting room if there is nowhere to put them and no staff to look after them. We need more staff and infrastructure. £10.5 million for general practice would pay for just over 100 full-time GPs, barely putting a dent in the shortfall. Waiting times for joint replacements are enormous. If you gave me 100 orthopaedic surgeons with the support staff and operating theatres and beds I am sure waiting times would fall rapidly and never return. That’s not to say that better organisation wouldn’t help but we can’t go on rearranging the deckchairs while the ship is sinking and expect things to get better.

Other articles recently have highlighted the huge cost of locum and agency staff costs in the NHS. When in general practice we often used locums to cover sickness, maternity leave and holidays to maintain our service level. There is obviously a pool of GPs who want to work but don't want a fixed contract. This is reasonable as everyone's work life balance, family needs and choice is different. There must be a better way of encouraging this pool of GPs to better support General Practice. In hospitals much medical and nursing cover is provided by commercial agencies who can basically charge anything they like, especially at short notice or unpopular times. If I was a hospital doctor and was offered multiple times my normal hourly rate to work a short notice weekend shift, why would I not accept?

This, combined with agencies’ grossly inflated fees, makes the cost of cover enormous. I seem to remember in Edinburgh there was a nurse bank which held a list of nurses who could do extra shifts but be employed and paid by the NHS. Perhaps it’s time for the NHS to set up its own agency, ban the use of commercial agencies and set pay rates with no middleman fees. There must be a population of doctors to employ otherwise the commercial agencies would not exist. This might enable us to cut costs and maintain services until we train more permanent staff. We did, after all, train these staff to work in our NHS.

(Dr) Gordon Scott, Edinburgh

Old tricks

I nearly fell off my chair laughing on Monday morning (thus risking a visit to A&E...) when I read about John Swinney's “Frailty Teams”. Apparently, they are to be put in place at the front door of all A&Es in order to better redirect older casualties, either elsewhere within the hospital, or back home to receive more appropriate care.

Given the parlous state of both home care and care provision with hospitals more widely, shouldn't they be called “Clear Off Back Home & Fade Away Quietly” teams?

I genuinely doubt that “Honest John” has had an original idea in his life. If this really is of his own making, it's a belter of a start.

Paul Marsden, Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway

Rare honesty?

Did Shona Robison really say, as quoted (your report, 28 January), that her £30 million “invest to save” fund would “drive out efficiencies”? Given the bourach that the SNP regime has presided over – most recently, with the £28 million wasted on not having a National Care Service and the £600 million losses at nationalised ScotRail – I can well believe that it was a rare flash of honesty.

She has also achieved the miracle of having, as she claims, reduced the numbers of civil servants marginally while increasing the Civil Service salaries bill from £403 million in 2022 to £445m in 2024.

Can anyone show us just how this has been value for our money?

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Cold comfort

Could Ian Moir let me know who his energy supplier is please (Letters, 28 January)? He says electricity from renewables can be had for 25p a unit. And here was I thinking that Scotland was being ripped off paying 54p a unit, as opposed to London and the Southeast paying 39p when Scotland is the one providing the energy!

Certainly Greg Jackson of Octopus, advocating for regional pricing, says Scotland should have the cheapest bills, rather than the most expensive. I am rather desperate for this, as I am still paying off Scottish Power £200 a month for my first two years here in a two-bedroom flat, and my bill from Octopus this month is £383! I should add that my heat is on from 8.30-10.30am and 6 -11pm. Luxurious I know, but maybe not when you factor in no hot water (I bathe at the gym) and that I wear flannel pyjamas, a bathrobe and a hat when I go to bed under a duvet, a woollen blanket and an acrylic blanket. With a hot water bottle, of course!

These bills and my council tax take up my entire state pension and I cannot imagine what it is like for families or other older people without additional resources. It is nothing short of obscene and I cannot understand why our useless Westminster government has categorically failed to protect people from these outrageous prices when the governments of other countries did so right from the start.

Perhaps “Morticia” Reeves could address this rather than worrying about the feelings of a handful of non-dom millionaires? Could not the Cabinet collectively announce that they will not take their energy “expenses” from the taxpayer this year?

Marjorie Ellis Thompson, Edinburgh

Risk to residents

As a Tayside resident I'm delighted Brian Cox will be returning to Dundee to perform at the Rep (your report, 25 January). He is a most excellent actor. It seems fitting that the play will be about the 2008 financial crash which resulted from a flawed housing market. Right now Dundee has more than 800 RAAC (Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete) properties. Across Scotland there are many more. They are only decades old but now risk collapse.

These properties are home to the usual mix of families, first-time buyers, pensioners with their first home, single people. One thing all have in common is they were all unaware of RAAC until a year or so ago. The government, councils, lenders and surveyors knew, as an estate in England was leveled in the 1990s.

Right now houses across Scotland have lost all value, some have been cleared at short notice, residents moved without option, Compulsory Purchases can be served at huge loss, with mortgages continuing and homes demolished.

In Dundee residents are still unaware of council plans. Could a city with housing shortages soon experience a surge of homelessness?

Apart from a dogged community group, local newspaper and the MSP Stephen Gethins, the story gathers little attention.

Perhaps another Dundee actor will find themselves, in 17 years' time, treading the boards of a theatre telling a story about thousands of lives irrevocably damaged by a system built on profit and a lack of accountability?

Guy Findlay, Monifieth, Angus

Get tough

This useless government, awakened by the horrendous Southport murders, is going to introduce stricter checks on the sale of knives (your report, 27 January).

Pitiful when most thugs already have them, or if not then they just need to open the kitchen drawer. What is needed is a draconian deterrent. How about a mandatory two years in jail for anyone carrying a knife and ten years for anyone injuring anyone and a full-life sentence for murder?

On the other hand, the threat of reintroducing the death penalty might just do the trick.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Parallels

Alexander McKay claims there are “no parallels to be drawn” between the Holocaust and Israel’s behaviour in the Gaza Strip (28 January). How, then, does he explain the interim ruling of the International Court of Justice that there exists a plausible risk that Israel's actions violate the 1948 Genocide Convention, or the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for Benjamin Netanyahu following an investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity?

As many Holocaust survivors have noted, “never again” can only mean never again for anybody. Not just for one ethnic or religious group. Contrary to the grotesquely distorted picture presented by Mr McKay, the Irish Times reports that country’s Deputy Prime Minister as saying: “I think the President was very clear, as is the Government, as are the people of Ireland, in calling out the horrors of the Holocaust.” President Higgins had “‘rightly mentioned the situation in the Middle East’ and at the same time called for Israeli hostages still held by Hamas to be released”.

Keith Bennett, Edinburgh

Disparity

I generally agree with the gist of Alexander McKay's letters, so I was surprised and disappointed by his criticism of the Irish Prime Minister's speech on Holocaust Memorial Day. Anyone who fails to recognise the grotesque disparity between remembrance of the Holocaust and the present day persecution of Palestine by the Israeli government must have a peculiarly slanted view of what is right and what is wrong.

Graham M McLeod, Kinross, Perth and Kinross

No fit state

Would newsreaders please note. There is no country called Columbia. There is, however, one called Colombia.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Kinross

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