How will SNP spend £2bn Westminster windfall for NHS?

SCOTLAND’S NHS is being cut to the bone and can be saved only by massively increasing the number of doctors and nurses, Tory MSPs will warn this week.

They will demand the Scottish Government uses a funding bonus to solve a workforce crisis which is devastating services and patients.

Theresa May has pledged an additional £20 billion for the NHS, which means an extra £2 billion will come to Scotland – boosting the record £12.2 billion health spend.

The Scottish Government has yet to say how it will use the money.

But Scots Tories will this week highlight the toll of the NHS staffing crisis as part of a new awareness campaign, SNP NHS Watch. The concerns being raised include:

Out-of-hours GP services in Ayrshire now being in ‘meltdown’;

The only dementia ward in the Western Isles being set to close;

Out-of-hours services at three Fife hospitals being axed;

Maternity services at Dr Gray’s Hospital in Elgin, Moray, being downgraded, with ‘at risk’ women sent to Aberdeen or Inverness;

The children’s ward at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, Renfrewshire, being closed.

The Tories hope the campaign will force the SNP to take responsibility for problems in the NHS rather than blame Westminster.

Scottish Tory health spokesman Miles Briggs said: ‘The SNP has cut and centralised services. By 2021, we will be more than 3,000 nurses short and 900 GPs short. We need to be training at an over-capacity rate for the next few years.

‘Are we allowing enough domiciled Scots to study medicine? We need to look at how that’s funded and how many places are available.’

Mr Briggs also noted that the proportion of doctors who leave Scotland to work abroad after their foundation years is double the UK rate.

He will urge Health Secretary Jeane Freeman to try to tempt them back, saying: ‘We’ve allowed them to be lost to our NHS.’

Dr Lewis Morrison, chairman of the British Medical Association Scotland, said: ‘Too many vacant posts mean doctors who are in-post are being stretched beyond their limits to try to cover gaps.

‘This is not a sustainable situation and the effects of Brexit on recruitment of European doctors puts us at real risk of things getting worse.

‘Until more is done to make Scotland a more attractive place for

‘It’s no surprise that services are being cut’

doctors, recruitment and retention problems are likely to continue.’

Norman Provan, associate director of the Royal College of Nursing Scotland, said: ‘For too long, nursing staff have had to deal with increased demands on their time while also battling chronic staff shortages, so it’s no surprise that services are being cut as a result.’

A spokesman for Ms Freeman said: ‘It is the SNP which has delivered record spending and staffing, and we are recruiting even more doctors and nurses. Spending per head in Scotland is more than 7 per cent higher than the rest of the UK.

‘The Tories are engaged in the creeping privatisation of the health service in England – something we will never support in Scotland.’