Sturgeon urged to ease NHS targets

RUTH Davidson has challenged Nicola Sturgeon to review the Scottish Government’s 40 NHS targets in a bid to ease the pressure on struggling hospitals.

The Scottish Tory leader claimed a culture of targets was ‘damaging clinical care and hampering the treatment of patients’. She said: ‘When twothirds of senior hospital doctors say the managerial agenda is getting in the way of them doing their job, you have to act. If a target helps people survive and get better, it should be kept. But if it simply micro-manages clinicians’ time and pulls them away from patients, it should be ditched.’

Miss Davidson also outlined her party’s proposal for a £1billion cash boost for the NHS.

‘At a time when the population is ageing and demand rising, the NHS needs our support,’ she said. ‘That’s why we propose today the Scottish Government backs a new NHS guarantee: spending on our health service should rise each year by whatever is highest: inflation, 2 per cent, or the extra funding from Westminster. Every penny passed on. That would mean health spending rising by more than £1billion by the end of this decade.’

On schools, Miss Davidson called for control over budgets, recruitment and funding of the new attainment challenge to be given to head teachers.

She said: ‘I couldn’t care less whether these schools are called free schools, academies, charter schools or comprehensives. We need to ditch the dogma and give our school leaders the power and the tools to blossom.’