SNP's new health chief dismisses worries over key NHS waiting times being missed

Angela Constance led her first government debate in the new health brief, where she said the SNP is committed to renewing, protecting and investing in Scotland’s NHS.

In 2025 First Minister John Swinney pledged that no patient would wait more than a year for treatment by March 2026.

Instead she said the important thing is that some progress has been made, and pledged that no one will wait over 26 weeks for an outpatient appointment by the end of this parliamentary term - five years away.

During the debate she said: “Our commitment to tackle long waits is unwavering, and while we did not meet our March target, this was a stretch and an ambition.

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“What matters are the actions that we have taken to go further.”

She then detailed that new outpatient waits over 52 weeks have fallen for 11 consecutive months, along with inpatient and day case waits over 52 weeks falling for 15 months.

On top of this new outpatient appointments of over a year have fallen by 76 per cent since last summer.

She said: “That means thousands more people are getting their scans and their scopes sooner, helping them to get a faster diagnosis.”

Ms Constance then said the Scottish Government “wants to go much further” and will “deliver on our manifesto commitment of ensuring that no patient waits longer than 26 weeks for treatment by the end of this parliamentary term”.

In her speech she also said she will publish a plan to improve patient flow through hospitals within the first 100 days, along with a consultation on banning vapes and nicotine product displays.

However her comments on the missed waiting time target were criticised by Scottish Labour’s deputy leader Dame Jackie Baillie MSP, who said “our NHS needs her to do well”.

Ms Baillie said: “I distinctly recall the First Minister making that commitment, and that should have been delivered over three months ago.

“Yet there are still 32,279 waits for treatment of more than a year, and there are still 3,433 waits of over two years, and at the last count there are still more than 750,000 ongoing waits for tests and treatment.

“Behind those figures are people in pain, waiting day after day for the appointment letter that never comes.

“In the meantime, their lives are on hold.”

Speaking after the debate, Miles Briggs MSP, the Scottish Conservatives’ health spokesman, added: “After two decades of chronic SNP mismanagement our NHS is in a state of permanent chaos.

“Just yesterday, we found out that the Nationalists have overseen the worst A&E waiting times in April on record - they have a cheek to claim they are protecting our health service.

“Medics are working tirelessly for their patients, but they’ve been betrayed by successive SNP health secretaries whose dire workforce planning has left them without the resources they desperately need.

“Instead of focusing on this crisis, John Swinney is obsessing over another divisive independence referendum - that is unforgivable.

“We will continue to hold this rotten SNP government to account and demand that they focus on the issues that matter to ordinary Scots, not constitutional grievances.”