Nicola Sturgeon's sticking plaster approach to the health service is not working

Working in the NHS should be a source of pride for staff, but they need the resources to deliver the care Scots deserve

(Getty)

Last week at SNP Conference, the First Minister told Scotland to trust her and asked that we judge her on her record.

In Scotland we know that record isn’t good enough. We see an attainment gap between the richest and the rest in our classrooms, a national police force staggering form controversy to scandal and job creation lagging behind the rest of the UK.

Our NHS is the most valued public service in Scotland. Now more than ever we need a health service equipped to face the challenges of the future.

The independent experts at Audit Scotland have just looked at the SNP’s record running our NHS. Their verdict is nothing short of damning.

The report confirms what SNP Ministers have spent months trying to deny – that they have underfunded our NHS, with a real terms decrease in funding for our hospitals, nurses and doctors.

The result is a health service struggling to cope with demand. Few things exemplify this better than the £850 million flagship hospital in Glasgow. The Queen Elizabeth University Hospital has needed specialist support twice in just four months because it was struggling with demand in A&E. This was during the summer and a mild autumn, how will the hospital cope in winter?

This is the biggest hospital in Europe, supposed to be the shining beacon of what the NHS in Scotland can deliver – last week it was reported that elderly patients at the hospital had to lie in their own filth because the wards regularly run out of linen at night.

These stories do not suggest a hospital supported by a government that has protected the NHS.

Audit Scotland reported a huge increase in the use of private staff in the NHS simply to get through the day. A 53 per cent increase in the use of private nursing and midwifery staff, a 22 per cent increase in private doctors.

Back in 2007 the SNP’s Health Spokesperson pledged that in Government the SNP would “make sure money is used for frontline health care and does not become someone else's profit margin.”

That Health Spokesperson went on to become Health Minister, and then ultimately First Minister. It was Nicola Sturgeon, whose government this year spent a record amount on private health care.

The SNP’s record on the NHS sees 71 per cent of A&E posts going unfilled for six months at a time. That explains why Scotland faced an A&E crisis last winter, with patients waiting for treatment in portakabins and sleeping on trolleys in corridors overnight.

Working in the NHS should be a source of pride for staff, but they need the resources to deliver the care Scots deserve. Instead they are increasingly under resourced, undervalued and under pressure.

Perhaps most damming of all, the report says the SNP have made no progress toward shifting the balance of care out of hospitals and into communities. This is the only way our NHS will be able to meet demand in the coming decades

Nicola Sturgeon is the most powerful woman in the UK, but her sticking plaster approach to the health service is not working. She asked to be judged on her record; well it simply isn’t good enough. Her vision for the health service is no further forward. This is the reality of SNP Government with the wrong priorities.

Jackie Baillie is Scottish Labour’s Public Services Spokesperson