TURN THE TIDE ON PLASTIC

and Dundee. We support the Eu’s vision to reduce single-use plastics as far as possible and ensure any singleuse plastics are easily recyclable by 2030. We are considering what other single-use items can be reduced and removed from Scottish Government buildings later this year.

‘Our newly appointed expert panel on environmental charges is considering what further action we can take to fight against our throwaway culture, and this will include looking at disposable cups and plastic straws and considering any potential implications for disabled people.’

The most up-to-date figures, obtained from the Scottish Liberal Democrats through a freedom of information request, show that the Scottish Government purchased 446,056 disposable cups between September 2016 and August 2017.

It purchased only 1,023 re-usable cups, including plastic, travel-mug style cups for resale to Scottish Government staff and ceramic cups for use in staff restaurants.

From June 4, all hot drinks purchased in the government’s official headquarters, St Andrew’s House in Edinburgh, will be served in reusable mugs.

The same rules will apply in all of its other offices, including Victoria Quay in Leith and Atlantic Quay in Glasgow.

Ceramic mugs will be provided for those sitting in the Scottish Government restaurants and cafes but staff are being encouraged to bring their own mugs for takeaways. Staff were informed of the changes earlier this month to give them time to prepare for the change.

Orkney and Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael, who is leading the Liberal Democrats’ campaign against plastic waste, said it was ‘great news’ that the SNP had finally agreed to tackle their throwaway culture in government buildings.

‘The next step is to stop dithering and commit to introducing a Scotland-wide “latte levy” so that single-use cups are sent packing, just like plastic bags were,’ he said.‘We need to act quickly to stop the oceans from becoming a plastic soup.’

CANCER caught early is more likely to be cured, so behind the statistics on missed target times we report today lies the horrific reality of people suffering and possibly dying unnecessarily.

How hollow the SNP’s boasts of being the ‘guardians of the NHS’ ring when the number of patients waiting more than six weeks for tests that can diagnose bowel cancer rose from 2,918 in March of last year to 5,178 in March this year.

So much for their plan to vote on English matters at Westminster ‘to safeguard the NHS’ when only 75.9 per cent of hospital inpatients and day cases were seen within the 12-week legal guarantee in March 2018, compared with 82.1 per cent at the same time last year.

We are used to the SNP closing ranks to protect its own when bad news strikes as, time and again, lacklustre ministers have been left in post too long – perhaps because the paucity of talent at the top means finding a replacement is no easy task.

But surely this latest raft of dreadful statistics will end the reign of Health Secretary Shona Robison? Yes, the health brief is a tough one but Miss Robison has never looked up to the task.

Audit Scotland calculates that more than £13billion is spent on NHS Scotland annually, yet from GPs to radiology, from mental health services to paediatrics, the service is reliant on the goodwill and superhuman efforts of frontline staff simply to keep staggering along.

Miss Robison pledged to end the problem of so-called bed-blocking, when patients well enough to be discharged remain marooned on wards for lack of aftercare.

The issue still blights the NHS and neatly sums up Miss Robison’s good intentions and inability to deliver positive change.

She is forever ‘consulting with stakeholders and experts’ and ‘bringing forward plans’ but her jam tomorrow promises are useless for patients.

The NHS needs to spend its billions better and that means innovative reform from the politicians at the top.

Forever at the mercy of events, like a cork in a storm-tossed sea, Miss Robison has proven entirely incapable of delivering the sort of drastic change required.

And the public will not forget that it was on Miss Robison’s watch that health boards started to dip into charity funds to cover day-to-day spending, a scandalous state of affairs indicating how low NHS Scotland has been allowed to sink.

Nicola Sturgeon embarrasses herself when she claims things are worse in England. It is utterly irrelevant to the Scottish patients whose interests she is meant to defend. Miss Sturgeon needs now to comport herself as First Minister of Scotland and not just the partisan leader of the SNP.

She needs to forget sparing her party’s blushes by keeping her lame duck friend Miss Robison in post.

She needs, as a matter of urgency, to bring down the final curtain on Miss Robison’s disastrous four-year tenure at health.

This is not about mere politicking – the lives of seriously ill people are at stake.