By Democrat reporter
Crisis-hit NHS has been attacked for spending millions of pounds a year on the likes of overseas travel, hospitality and entertainment, while patients suffer long waiting lists and struggle to see a doctor in person. These were described as “useless frivolities” by critics.
The SNP Government were urged to get a grip on this spending while beimg pointed out as a bad example due to wasting cash on pet projects at a time when the Vale of Leven Hospital in Alexandria is once again being earmarked for closure.
First Minister John Swinney was told to “take some responsibility” for the out-of-control spending by the country’s health service.
Figures reported by the Daily Telegraph show that Scotland’s 14 health boards spent about £20m on sectors labelled “tangential at best” to patient care. The totals for the most recently available financial year showed that almost £600,000 was spent on hospitality and entertainment, and about £782,000 splashed out on overseas travel.
More than £3.5m was spent on advertising and public relations and over £5m was allocated for trade union facility time, which is paid time off during working hours for representatives to carry out their union duties. Nearly half the £20m was utilised on “external consultancy” providing advice to the NHS.
Scottish Tory MSP Stephen Kerr collated the figures from publicly accessible data and claimed that it showed that “huge sums” were being spent on “matters entirely unrelated to patient care.” He said:“I am appalled at these figures.
“The fact that the NHS in Scotland is spending such huge sums on matters entirely unrelated to patient care shows that there is an out-of-control spending culture which never seems to question how taxpayers’ money is spent. The familiar refrain from health boards about how little money they have, how they cannot undertake operations or how stretched they are, is put into perspective by this level of spending on useless frivolities.
“The SNP Scottish Government has to take responsibility for this. It is their callous disrespect for the taxpayer that leads to out-of-control and luxurious spending across government.”
There are record NHS waiting lists, with one in six Scots waiting for treatment as well as the highest number of delayed discharges of all time. Doctors at some flagship hospitals have declared a crisis as bed blocking becomes the norm amid a massive surge in flu cases.
A recent study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies highlighted the poor state of the health service north of the border, with waiting lists for planned operations, cancer treatment, accident-and-emergency and diagnostic tests “still rising in Scotland”, with England seeing a fall instead.
NHS Lothian had the highest hospitality and entertainment spend at £184,000, with NHS Grampian spending the most on overseas travel, with 217 individual trips undertaken in the space of a year at a cost of £262,367. NHS Lanarkshire had the largest public relations bill, spending £684,000.
The highest costs for trade unionists’ “facility time” was built up by NHS Lothian, with almost £2m billed, with Glasgow having the largest bill for external consultancy at more than £4m. NHS Lothian’s papers said that £139,000 of its hospitality costs related to charges for “catering services for meetings and events held internally and prepared by our in-house catering departments.”
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We have put forward budget proposals that will see a record £2 billion increase in front-line NHS spending to reduce NHS waiting lists, make it easier for people to see their GP and progress the Belford Hospital, Monklands Hospital and Edinburgh Eye Pavilion projects.
“The draft budget proposes over £16.2 billion for health boards to deliver front-line services and includes our commitments to deliver fair pay settlements for our NHS workforce like nurses and midwives.”