Failures let NHS go into a slow decline

ONE of the most audacious claims the SNP has made in recent years is that only it can be trusted to protect and invest in the National Health Service.

To hear First Minister Nicola Sturgeon talk, anyone might be forgiven for thinking that the Nationalists established the NHS.

With the help of some good old-fashioned smoke and mirrors in the shape of free prescriptions and the abolition of parking charges at hospitals, they have created the illusion that their stewardship of the NHS is dynamic and innovative.

In reality, devoid of ideas and fearful of the challenges that reform presents, the SNP has spent the past 11 years managing the slow decline of the service.

Well, Miss Sturgeon should take heed of a new poll which reveals almost half of Scots believe standards in the health service have worsened under the SNP.

Challenged about this, yesterday, a Government spokesman insisted that the NHS is working with ‘record levels’ of funding and staffing.

This will surprise many who have experience of the NHS. Despite the commitment of doctors and nurses, staffing shortages mean the Government’s own targets for treatment times are repeatedly missed.

The poor condition of much of the NHS estate, with buildings fit for a different era now crumbling, confirms that many parts of the service is in failing health.

Successive SNP Health Secretaries have all, with their refusal to address serious reform, failed rather than protected the NHS in Scotland.