Fightthe downgradingof Monklandsorthopaedics

Within weeks of being elected to the Scottish Parliament, I was invited along to a briefing by NHS Lanarkshire at their headquarters in Bothwell.

The board’s chief executive, Calum Campbell, almost casually mentioned that the health service in Lanarkshire was being asked by the SNP Government to find £43 million of “savings” or, in more common parlance, £43 million worth of cuts.

For all the talk of patient safety, the best configuration for consultants and what the Royal Colleges say, this is the context in which trauma and in-patient orthopaedic services will be axed at Monklands Hospital.

The provision of local health services accessible to all and free at the point of need is a fundamental principle of our NHS.

It is a principle that I support unreservedly, and it is precisely why I have been working with local campaigners and Labour MSPs like Elaine Smith and Anas Sarwar to fight this downgrading.

Why people are so angry about this cut is that it constitutes a major change in service provision and yet NHS Lanarkshire has refused to enter into what by any measure would be considered to be meaningful consultation with local people about it.

Despite this, the SNP Cabinet Secretary responsible has refused to call the decision in.

When challenged in the Scottish Parliament her defence was that no decisions have been taken and there is a due process to follow.

Yet others made the specious argument that the A&E department will be safe.

These services will go from Monklands next week. The dedicated staff affected have been served with notice by their employer weeks ago. Experienced professionals like Sathar Thajam have left their posts after over 40 years of loyal service.

And everybody knows that it would be perfectly competent for the current Health Secretary to intervene, in precisely the same way that her boss Nicola Sturgeon did when she was the Health Secretary back in 2007.

And one sleight to democracy has been compounded by another. On September 28, after a robust debate, Parliament voted to instruct the SNP Government to step in to stop the imminent removal of services at the Monklands.

The SNP, including local members, abstained. Most people assume that we live in a parliamentary democracy and so a decision like this would have been heeded. Not a bit of it. Instead, the SNP Government has chosen to defy the will of the Scottish Parliament.

But a government which ignores both Parliament and - more importantly - the will of the people, sooner or later will be called to account for their actions.

That’s why with days to go, there is, in my view, still time for a last-minute reprieve for trauma and in patient orthopaedics at the Monklands.

But it will require local SNP MSPs to get off the fence of abstention, speak up for the communities they are elected to serve, and join together on a cross-party basis to put pressure on their own Minister to act – and act now.

Last-minute reprieve will require SNP MSPs to get off the fence of abstention

MSP Richard Leonard