The wrong medicine

MORE powers are flowing the way of the Scottish Government just as deeply troubling questions over its competence mount.

Fresh from the embarrassment of having its flagship Named Persons scheme declared illegal, the SNP is tasked with taking command of several key aspects of welfare. (And how dispiriting to see John Swinney, Deputy First Minister, still clinging to the hope that mere tinkering can salvage the discredited Named Persons scheme. Scotland’s vulnerable children would be better served were Mr Swinney to courageously scrap the project and start afresh, with more concern for families and less for his own party’s reputation.)

Already the portents on welfare are not good.

Angela Constance’s moonstruck performance as Education Secretary saw her rapidly replaced by Mr Swinney.

Miss Constance is now Holyrood’s Social Security Secretary, where her first wheeze was to float the idea that benefits will no longer be called benefits lest the name stigmatise recipients. So far, so foolish – and worse is to come. Miss Constance says she wants GPs – instead of private companies – to be involved in assessing claims for disability and ill-health benefits.

This seems based on little more than virtue signalling, designed to please the SNP rank and file who have a knee-jerk reaction to anything designed to reform the bloated welfare system.

The BMA is agog and warns that GPs – already battling a recruitment and retention crisis – currently do not lack for work.

Dr Alan McDevitt, chairman of BMA Scotland’s GP committee, gave a stark warning: ‘It is hugely important that the future social security system for Scotland does not further increase the workload pressures that GPs are already facing.’

So much for the Nationalists’ boast that they are the ‘guardians of the NHS’.

The message in ongoing consultations over Miss Constance’s plan must be that doctors ought to be concerned with health matters alone and that welfare administration is better handled elsewhere.