£75m bill for agency nurses
A RECORD £75 million is to be spent on agency nursing staff over the next three years – sparking further concerns about a creeping privatisation of Scotland’s NHS.
The highest bill for agency nursing so far was £24.5 million in 2016/17.
Some £23.6 million was spent on nursing and midwifery agency staff last year, while a record £152.1 million went on overtime pay for NHS staff.
Critics say the increased funding for agency staff goes against a pledge by the SNP to protect the health service from privatisation.
Last night, Scottish Tory health spokesman Miles Briggs said: ‘This is entirely a consequence of the SNP’s disastrous workforce planning. It ignored warnings on an expanding and ageing population and dismissed the prospect of a nursing retirement boom.
‘Now patients and the staff who are left are paying the price and the SNP is calling on the taxpayer to bail it out.’
There are more than 3,300 nursing vacancies in Scotland.
Royal College of Nursing Scotland director Theresa Fyffe said: ‘The lack of investment in nursing over a number of years has come to a head.’
She warned that Scotland is ‘not training enough nurses’, adding that agency spending ‘is not sustainable’.
The Scottish Government said: ‘NHS England’s nursing agency spend is three times higher per head than in Scotland, and last year nursing agency spend here reduced by 3.6 per cent.
‘We’re determined to continue to cut nursing agency use.’
THERE is nothing wrong with some rough and tumble in politics. Our noisy, adversarial Parliament has functioned for centuries as an important safety valve.
But cruel personal insult, in which the victim is dehumanised or threatened, is dangerous and wrong. One faction referring to another as cockroaches is particularly nasty. So is the suggestion, which The Mail on Sunday reports today, that the Prime Minister should ‘bring her own noose’ to a meeting of the Parliamentary Conservative Party.
Such crude and savage terms are a sign that something has gone badly wrong with our political system. People are no longer listening to each other. They have started to regard opponents as enemies.
There are also foolish calls – supported by thousands of marchers in London yesterday – for the re-running of the 2016 vote. This plan threatens to unravel the crucial rule that we accept the outcomes of votes we do not like. Without that acceptance, there is nothing but chaos. Taken to its limit, such behaviour can destroy politics as we know it. It also prevents those involved from thinking or compromising.
The Mail on Sunday has warned the Tory Party repeatedly against plots, factionfights and leadership contests.
The public are utterly weary of the way the political class has wasted the past two years and will punish those responsible, especially if they are forced into yet another unwanted election.
Contrast the European Union. Whatever we may think about it, it has maintained a firm and effective unity among its 27 members, and as a result has given almost nothing away to our divided and irresolute Government, which never even seems to be sure what it wants.
It has never been more important for the Tory Party, at the very least, to present a united front and to squash talk of leadership challenges, let alone of cockroaches and nooses. Of course, faction fighting can be enjoyable for those who engage in it.
But even they may wish they had reined themselves in when they have to endure the Corbyn government their actions have helped to bring about.
SNP hypocrites on NHS ‘privatisation’
THE SNP makes much of its principled opposition to the ‘privatisation’ of the NHS.
At election after election, the Nationalists warn – with little evidence – that only a vote for them can prevent the health service from falling into the hands of grasping profiteers.
The truth is that while the SNP Government may – in common with other mainstream political parties – be opposed to the privatisation of the service, it is happy to contract out some NHS services to private companies.
The employment of a pharmaceutical firm to compile a database of all Scots’ medical records is only one example of the Nationalists’ hypocrisy. Another is the use of agencies to provide nursing cover.
Over the next three years, £75 million will be paid out by NHS Scotland to ensure adequate staffing in hospitals across the country. Much of this money will not go to frontline workers but to the agencies which provide them.
Of course, patient safety must come first and if the engagement of agency nurses is the only way to ensure rotas are filled, then we must live with this solution.
But after 11 years in power, the SNP should have addressed the NHS staffing crisis, which has got worse on its watch.
While the party brags of its opposition to privatisation, its incompetence means more public money than ever is being paid to the private sector to ensure the NHS doesn’t collapse.