SNP ‘incompetence’ has left NHS in ‘doom loop’, claims Sarwar

EDINBURGH: First Minister John Swinney has been accused of having his “head in the sand” over the state of Scotland’s NHS – with Labour insisting the health service has “plunged into a doom loop” under the SNP.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar claimed a “failure of leadership” in Government had resulted in “soaring waiting lists and poorer health outcomes”.

He raised the issue at First Minister’s Questions on Thursday in the wake of a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) which claimed NHS performance in Scotland in key areas remains worse than before the pandemic, and has “continued to decline in all but one in the past year”.

Mr Swinney insisted “progress” is being made as the NHS seeks to recover from the impact of the Covid pandemic, although he also accepted “there is more work that has got to be done”.

He told MSPs the latest figures had shown some signs of improvement – highlighting a reduction in people waiting for key diagnostic tests and improved performance against cancer treatment waiting time targets.

Mr Swinney said: “I accept there is work that remains to be done to improve the performance of the National Health Service but the Government is putting the investment and the focus in to enable that to be the case.” Mr Sarwar hit back, saying: “The First Minister has his head in the sand.

“The IFS make the point we have disproportionately higher spending here in Scotland and we have more staff, but we have poorer performance.

“That points to not staff being wrong, not resources being wrong, but a failure of leadership and a failure of Government.”

The Scottish Labour leader told the First Minister: “On his watch our NHS has plunged into a doom loop of soaring waiting lists and poorer health outcomes.” He said Mr Swinney “can try to spin the facts all he likes, but the devastating incompetence of the SNP is clear to see”. The First Minister said he is “the first to acknowledge we have challenges in recovering from the Covid pandemic”, but he added: “The Government is making the investment and making the interventions to ensure that our National Health Service performs in a fashion that meets the needs of the people of Scotland.” The latest figures show a 7.4 per cent reduction in the number of people waiting for eight key diagnostic tests, he added, while almost three-quarters (73.2 per cent) of cancer patients start treatment within 62 days of their first referral.

The First Minister also said NHS staffing is up by 26 per cent since the SNP came to power in 2007, adding there has been a 50.4 per cent increase in the workforce of consultant oncologists over the last 10 years.

Mr Swinney cited that as showing the SNP is “delivering the progress that people in Scotland require”, as he accused Labour of having “betrayed” pensioners by ending the universal winter fuel payment. Hitting out at the Scottish Labour leader, Mr Swinney said: “If Mr Sarwar believes the solution to all of our problems in Scotland is the election of a Labour government, I would ask him to go and have a conversation with pensioners in Scotland today, because in the first few months of a Labour (UK) Government, pensioners in this country have been betrayed by the Labour Government, who promised change and all they did was slash the financial support for pensioners in our country by cutting the winter fuel payment. “If that’s what change means, Scotland doesn’t need change, it needs progress under an SNP Government.”