FM sent NHS waiting times in ‘wrong direction’

Humza Yousaf has been accused of sending NHS waiting times "in the wrong direction", as it emerged more than 40,000 Scots have been waiting more than a year for an appointment.

Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross hit out at the First Minister, saying the NHS recovery plan published when Mr Yousaf was health secretary had pledged to abolish wait soft his length for outpatient appointments by March 2023.

He highlighted a report by spending watchdogs at Audit scotland on the state of the NHS he said had showed the number waiting a year or more for an outpatient appointment had risen from 3,594 in September 2019 to 40,052 by September 2023.

Mr Ross told the First Minister: “That shocking 11-fold increase in people waiting over a year is of course against a target which should be zero.”

Mr Yousaf accepted there is “still some way to go” as the NHS seeks to recover from the impact of the Covid pandemic.

But citing the Audit Scotland report – which the British Medical Association Scotland described as “staggeringly bleak” – Mr Ross challenged Mr Yousaf during First Minister's Questions at Holyrood yesterday.

“Humza Yousaf sent waitingtimes in the wrong direction ,” the Tory leader said.

“Humza Yousaf has no vision for Scotland’s NHS.

“He has been asleep at the wheel like every other SNP first minster.

“There has been a lost decade of leadership in Scotland’s NHS. Ten years of stalling and delay has had dire consequences for patients.

“How long are people in Scotland going to have to wait for the SNP to get their act together?”

Mr Yousaf said: “I accept there is still a way to go. I accept of course the recommendations of the Audit Scotland report.”