Dr Sandesh Gulhane (left) and First Minister John Swinney with Health Secretary Neil Gray.
by Bill Heaney
It’s not just the patients who are recovering under the SNP government, according to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Neil Gray.
“It is clear that our NHS is turning a corner under this Government and recovering following the pandemic,” he told MSPs on Thursday.
He added: “Long waits are down for eight months in a row, and thousands more operations are being delivered, with the Golden Jubilee hospital being named on Monday as the United Kingdom’s largest centre for hip and knee replacements.
“General practitioner numbers are up, a historic deal, worth more than half a billion pounds, has been
reached with GPs and 30 new walk-in GP centres are to be delivered.
“There has been an increase in the number of doctors, nurses, midwives and consultants, and our MyCare.scot service will begin to be rolled out from April. There has been a record level of investment in our health service.
“From personal experience as an unexpected secret shopper this week, I can say that our staff deliver world class care to the people we seek to serve.”
Conservative MSP Sandesh Gulhane, who is a practising NHS GP: “It is great to see the cabinet secretary back in the chamber [he was in hospital overnight], but he is wrong, because, during this parliamentary session, we have seen three different health secretaries, record waiting lists, record drug deaths, problems with delayed discharge and a failure to modernise our NHS.
“After almost 19 years in government, this is a mess of the Scottish National Party’s own making.
“I came into politics because I wanted to stand up for patients, stand up for ourselves as doctors, nurses
and key workers, and strengthen our greatest asset—our NHS. Under the SNP Government, our NHS has
been recklessly mismanaged, leading to countless scandals that have caused unimaginable suffering among patients and fear among staff, and patients have sat on two-year waiting lists.
“With that evidence in mind, how does the Scottish Government think that Scots would assess its
performance on health and social care in this parliamentary session? Members of the public who are stuck on waiting lists would give it a score of zero.”
But Neil Gray refuted this: “The polls suggest that this party is the most trusted in this Parliament to be the custodian of our most cherished public asset, which is our national health service. Perhaps that is because of the progress that we are making.
“Sandesh Gulhane and I share a desire for the continued recovery of our health service. I repeat that long waits in our health service are now down for eight months in a row.”
“That is because of the record investment that we are making, which Sandesh Gulhane voted against, and because of the incredible commitment of our hard-working NHS staff who continue to deliver for the people of Scotland.”