Neil’s Mystic Meg jibe over NHS cash plan
FORMER health secretary Alex Neil yesterday told MSPs that finance plans put forward by a cashstrapped NHS board look as though they were made up by psychic astrologer Mystic Meg.
He claimed NHS Tayside bosses failed to produce a strategy to make £210million of savings in five years.
Neil hit out after NHS Tayside board chairman Professor John Connell said to MSPs on Holyrood’s Public Audit Committee they need an extra £1.5million Scottish Government loan in 2017-18 to stop services being cut.
Neil told the health board bosses: “When I read the financial projections in the five-year plan, I thought they had been written by Mystic Meg – it was a bit of thumb in the air, let’s hope for the best. I didn’t see evidence of a strategy to get to £210million.”
But Prof Connell said: “A five-year plan has to be a long-term vision. I don’t think any health board in Scotland could give a five-year plan with detailed delivery of services costed over a five-year timescale.”
Meanwhile, MSPs were told a surplus property the health board had originally hoped to flog for £1.5million had sold for £550,000. Labour’s Monica Lennon commented: “Someone’s getting a bargain.”
NHS Scotland chief executive Paul Gray has appointed independent advisers to help NHS Tayside deal with their “considerable” financial challenges.