Labour leader Anas Sarwar and First Minister John Swinney.
By Bill Heaney
People are becoming sick listening to complaints about NHS waiting lists.
But it’s still there on the agenda for the Scottish Parliament despite the fact that the SNP have been in government for the past 17 years.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar told MSPs this week: “Yesterday, the First Minister outlined his programme for government—a statement with no vision, no strategy and no plan. Nowhere was that more glaring than it was for our national health service.
“On the Government’s watch, more than 864,000 Scots are on an NHS waiting list, which is one in six people across the country. The two previous First Ministers promised a catch-up plan and things got worse, but this First Minister did not even mention it.
“Unbelievably, despite growing demand and lengthening waiting lists, our NHS is performing 50,000 fewer operations a year than it did before the pandemic.”
He asked First Minister John Swinney by what date does he “expect patients to receive the standard of care that they deserve and that they are legally entitled to?”
Mr Swinney told him: “We face significant challenges in the NHS. The programme for government set out a range of interventions that we are making to reduce waiting times in the NHS, expand the capacity for undertaking treatment and improve performance in a number of key areas, particularly diagnostic information. I put on the record yesterday information about cancer diagnosis, which is significant in improving the outcomes for individuals in Scotland.
“We are working very hard to overcome the waiting lists that have been created as a consequence of Covid, and the health service is being resourced to enable it to do so.”