Have patients

The problem with Keith Howell’s latest salvo against the SNP is that the 1,000 cases where apparent undue delay has occurred in finalising treatment could well have obtuse or obscure conditions requiring specific clinical propriety (Letters, 17 July).

He targets the SNP for their shortcomings, but it was the Unionist parties’ failures in service delivery that resulted in the election of the SNP. To what extent does Mr Howell think that the NHS, for example, would perform better under, say, a Conservative or a Labour administration at Holyrood? They would have to operate under the same devolution constraints that afflict the SNP. If he reads the UK national press, or hears national broadcasts, he will know that public services elsewhere can hardly be regarded as a bowl of cherries.

It is common knowledge in the profession that graduate doctors, trained here at our expense, are being enticed to Australia to take up posts which are much better-paid on account of the money Australia has saved from not educating them. Does Mr Howell have a solution to that problem?

The money available is finite, so if more is required for the NHS in Scotland, savings have to be found on another programme, or taxes put up. DOUGLAS R MAYER Thomson Crescent

Currie, Midlothian