NICOLA’S NATIONALISTS SAVING THE NHS? WHAT A CHEEK!

THE SNP likes to style itself as the party of the NHS. Foolishly, the Nationalists think that because they say nice things about hospitals and nurses, it means they are doing a good job of running the health service. But nothing could be further from the truth and hard-working NHS staff, as well as patients, aren’t buying it any longer.

The only government serious about improving Scotland’s NHS is in Westminster – Barnett formula consequentials have resulted in large investments made in the NHS in England being passed to Scotland, too.

The SNP has no problem announcing how this money will be spent but is less keen on crediting its source. That’s because, for the Nationalists, the NHS has always been a political tool.

Who could forget their ridiculous behaviour during the 2014 independence campaign, when it was claimed the only way of ensuring Scots would have a health service free at the point of delivery was to vote Yes.

Four years after that deception, the only people jeopardising the NHS are the same ones who tried and failed to break up Britain.

Health has been fully devolved to the Scottish parliament for two decades. Since the SNP won power here in 2007, it has had full control over the NHS. It has decided how to deal with current challenges, as well as how to prepare for the future.

The Nationalists have failed miserably on both counts. It seems that with every week that passes, a new crisis has developed of this Scottish Government’s own making.

Last month, we highlighted how the SNP hadn’t managed to order enough of the best flu vaccination to cover every at-risk group, which includes over-65s, those with health conditions, and pregnant women.

Instead, the optimum jab would be limited to over-75s.

It was evidence of an SNP government which, in short, doesn’t know what it is doing.

Now we learn that the winter death toll last year was considerably higher than expected, and still this wasn’t enough for Ministers to sort out this flu jab fiasco.

Any regular follower of Scottish mainstream news will see that examples of such incompetence and negligence are commonplace.

Many of the health service’s problems can be laid at the door of disastrous workforce planning.

The training of student nurses – another area in which the SNP has absolute control over – was found to be short a few years ago, much to the annoyance of highly respected organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

As a result, wards right across the country are now short-staffed and vacancy levels this year reached a record high.

Thousands of nursing and midwifery posts lay empty, some for months on end. The only excuse the SNP could think of was Brexit, something that has yet to happen, as opposed to its own failings when it came to preparing the workforce numbers.

For many years, the Scottish Conservatives have been warning about a retirement boom among nurses and midwives, with an increasing slice of the workforce entering their late 50s and early 60s.

At the same time, we’ve seen Scotland’s population increase and the average age go up, meaning hospitals are inevitably going to be put under more pressure.

But instead of getting ready for this, the SNP has sat on its hands, preferring to obsess about constitutional matters and ignoring those in the know.

The GP crisis is equally serious. Anyone who has tried to book an appointment with their local family doctor will tell you so.

The Royal College of GPs predicts that by 2021, Scotland will have nearly 900 fewer GPs than it needs. The RCN warns Scotland will be short of 3,200 nurses and midwives by that time. When people can’t get a GP appointment, they will turn up at accident and emergency, where they will be confronted with a dwindling number of nurses on duty.

It is proof of a chaotic approach to government and it’s not only the patients and over-stretched staff who suffer – the taxpayer does, too.

Every year, the Scottish Government is paying millions more to expensive agency and bank nurses to plug gaps left by poor workforce planning. Locum doctors are, in some cases, paid more in a shift than some make in a fortnight.

These aren’t new problems and this failing Scottish Government has absolutely no answers for them.

Of course times are tough, and there’s nothing any government can do about increasing rates of challenging illnesses such as dementia.

But Nicola Sturgeon’s administration is making damaging choices.

Take the case of St John’s Hospital in Livingston, West Lothian, a key facility which serves a very large population and helps patients who have been turned away from hospitals in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

A decade ago, campaigners were so concerned about the hospital’s future that they challenged Ms Sturgeon, then health secretary, about it at a public NHS Lothian board meeting. She gave her personal assurance that the hospital would not be downgraded.

How wrong that proved to be.

Services are being stripped away from the facility. Under the SNP’s watch, the children’s ward has lost its 24/7 provision, forcing ill youngsters and their parents to travel 20 miles into the centre of Edinburgh.

Despite one of Ms Sturgeon’s successors, Jeane Freeman, acknowledging that she was anxious about this, a solution to the problem is still up to three years away.

This is a direct failing of the SNP and one born of its choices.

And it’s not an isolated case – services have also been lost to communities in Perth and Paisley, for example.

So, as parliament returns this week, it is time the SNP started owning the problems it has created and demonstrating whether, after 11 years in office, it can provide any solutions.

Under the SNP, the number of young Scots taking medical courses has plummeted to the lowest level in the history of our Scottish medical schools – thanks to the SNP’s cap on the number of Scots who get a place.

SNP ministers could look at this when deciding how to spend some of the additional £2 billion coming from the UK Government.

But much of this will be too little, too late for the SNP, which has a cheek to say it is serious about the NHS.

Frankly, if the party does not start showing it has the solutions to the problems we face, then Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Conservatives will.

Many of the problems in the NHS are due to disastrous planning