‘Control freak’ SNP forced watchdog to change NHS report

SNP ministers have been accused of trying to ‘rewrite’ criticism after it emerged officials demanded a report on the NHS by Scotland’s public spending watchdog be toned down.

Senior civil servants forced Audit Scotland to make dozens of changes to its report on NHS performance after claiming it was ‘alarmist’ and unbalanced.

Scottish Government officials including Paul Gray, chief executive of NHS Scotland, and Christine McLaughlin, director for health finance, objected to the tone of Audit Scotland’s analysis. They demanded sections were withdrawn and substituted with text they had written.

Details released under freedom of information law show 35 requests for changes for accuracy and 51 ‘points of clarification’ after officials read a draft of the report.

Opponents accused the Government of being ‘control freaks’ and of rewriting anything negative. The row comes weeks after Nicola Sturgeon publicly questioned the ‘methodology’ of Audit Scotland in a report revealing a slump in college student numbers.

Scottish Labour health spokesman Anas Sarwar said: ‘A few weeks ago at First Minister’s Questions Nicola Sturgeon openly attacked Audit Scotland over its report on Scotland’s colleges.

‘Now we know that wasn’t an outburst from an underpressure politician but symptomatic of a culture in the SNP Government of attacking Scotland’s independent financial watchdog.’

He added: ‘SNP ministers should not be trying to rewrite independent reports if they are critical of their record.’

The latest allegations concern a meeting of senior government officials and Audit Scotland last September, where the NHS report was discussed. Notes from the meeting say: ‘Report includes a lot of subjective, alarmist and sometimes clumsy language, eg NHS boards are resorting to, struggling…’

In the final version of the document, published in October, ‘struggled’ was retained but ‘resort to’ was dropped.

Scottish Tory health spokesman Miles Briggs said: ‘This is the behaviour of a control freak SNP government.’

A Government spokesman said: ‘It is normal practice for Audit Scotland to share draft reports in advance to allow the Scottish Government to provide comments or clarification on points of accuracy.’