Revealed: How ministers knew national treatment centres would be delayed months before announcement

At the beginning of the year ministers announced a two-year delay to 10 national treatment centres across the country.

However, papers obtained by Scottish Labour via a freedom of information request show officials knew as early as September 2023 that building work would need to be paused.

The government is now being accused of keeping these details quiet to “save face”.

National treatment centres are a network of healthcare facilities across the country providing inpatient care, day case treatment and diagnostic services, which should increase the number of patients able to access treatment.

In January it was announced the planned national treatment centres in Ayrshire and Arran, Grampian, Lanarkshire, Lothian and Tayside would need to be paused, along with a string of other NHS capital projects.

However officials wrote to former first minister Humza Yousaf, former deputy first minister Shona Robison and former health secretary Michael Matheson in September 2023 saying: “The proposals set out in this [recovery road map] paper will pause the development of the next phase of the national treatment centre programme and the programme for government’s commitment to open 10 national treatment centres (pus the replacement Edinburgh Eye Pavilion).”

In November, Mr Matheson then wrote to Ms Robison saying the delayed national treatment centres would not be finished until 2028 - the government had previously pledged to finish them by 2026.

By late November, government officials said in another paper that capital funding was not available and the national treatment centres not yet in construction should be paused, as the immediate priority is tackling NHS waiting lists.

One official even raised concerns in an email saying: “How do we handle what will be (another) commitment we are seen to be rolling back from?”

A new timeline of when these centres would be completed was due to have been published in the spring, but this has now also been delayed until December.

At the SNP party conference in October Mr Yousaf said his government would reduce NHS waiting lists by 100,000 by 2026.

However, in justifying the rationale for pausing the remaining national treatment centre projects, officials told the former first minister “the next phase of the national treatment centre programme will not deliver any additional capacity before the end of this parliamentary term”.

Dame Jackie Baillie MSP, Scottish Labour’s health spokeswoman, said: “This correspondence shows that the SNP government knew the future of its flagship network of national treatment centres was up in the air as early as September and spent months trying to find a way to save face.

“While the SNP has been building hospitals in the clouds, Scots have been dealing with the reality of longer waiting times that were never going to be fixed by the national treatment centres alone.

“The advice from NHS officials is clear - the SNP must prioritise dealing with the backlog and giving our hardworking doctors and nurses the equipment they need.

“The UK Labour government is providing enough funds for 160,000 more NHS appointments but it’s up to the SNP to spend that money wisely and that starts with being transparent about its spending plans.”

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said: “As we have said consistently, due to significant increases in construction costs due to inflation, and a lower than expected capital grant from the UK government, a capital review is currently underway.

“We plan to publish a revised Scottish Government infrastructure investment pipeline alongside the 2025/26 budget.”