Chamber and committees

To ask the First Minister whether she will provide an update on the Scottish Government’s progress towards reducing the number of people on hospital waiting lists and ending long waits for national health service treatment. (S6F-01899)

Figures from NHS Grampian show that two people have waited more than five and a half years for in-patient treatment. In NHS Grampian, for orthopaedic surgery alone, waiting times are 18 to 24 months, and more than 3,800 people are on the waiting list. I have a constituent on that list who is in debilitating pain, and that is impacting her physically, emotionally and financially. No meaningful progress has been made to reduce the number of people on waiting lists, as Kate Forbes has said. Our health secretary, Humza Yousaf, is focused more on the Scottish National Party’s succession plan than on the NHS recovery plan. What does the First Minister have to say to my constituent and to the thousands of other people who are suffering in pain on those waiting lists?

My wife and I were carers to two elderly parents with dementia. I have experienced the condition from both sides—as someone with caring responsibilities and as someone who saw at first hand how two wonderful people’s lives were increasingly impaired by a loss of independent function. I have also seen how social care staff in the north-east have cared gently and attentively for people who live with dementia, and I pay tribute to them today.

The Scottish Government needs to back up its rhetoric on valuing social care workers, because they are tired of hearing platitudes. There has clearly been some progress in laying the groundwork for a new dementia strategy, and that is to be welcomed. It will affect upwards of 90,000 people with dementia in Scotland, as well as their carers and, as we have heard today, their families.

Dementia symptoms can cause serious confusion and profound frustration for the people who live with them, and they can be very distressing for carers and loved ones. Their experiences need to be addressed in any framework, as we have also heard today.

This will also be the fourth such strategy since 2010. It is important to point out that the number of patients aged 65 or over has increased by 20 per cent during that period, as the Royal College of General Practitioners has emphasised to us. However, the reality is that the current systems and structures that are in place across health and social care simply do not have the capacity or the resources to rise to the monumental task ahead. We just are not equipped to deal with it.

We have an ageing population in Scotland and serious national health service workforce challenges, from a lack of general practitioners to shortages of community psychiatrist nurses and allied health professionals. We have a chronically underresourced social care system and a social care recruitment crisis contributing to delayed discharge and bed blocking in our hospitals. It is shocking that a patient in NHS Grampian in my region had their discharge delayed by 2,312 days. However, that is just the reality of the system.

The proposed national care service is deeply flawed and simply kicks the can down the road. We need immediate action. The Royal College of Physicians has also emphasised the wide variation in the number of consultant geriatricians across the country, with the north of Scotland having one geriatrician per 65,000 compared with the national average of one per 36,000. That must change.

Meanwhile, less than half of people who are newly diagnosed with dementia were offer post-diagnostic support during a vulnerable and potentially frightening time. Support should be person centred, accessible and available, but that is not the reality on the ground. We owe it to people living with dementia to get the fundamentals right to ensure that they have access to early diagnosis and post-diagnostic support, as well as appropriate palliative care as they near the end of their lives, as Marie Curie has called for. They should not have to bear the brunt of the dementia tax and the worry about how to cover the cost of their care.

We have had more than a decade of dementia strategies—it is time to start making a real difference.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what discussions it has had with COSLA about the delivery of local services over the next financial year. (S6O-01917)

COSLA’s cries of “SOS—save our services” have been ignored by this Scottish National Party Government. That will have a massive bearing on the ability of councils in North East Scotland to properly fund even statutory public services. Now there are also question marks over the Big Noise project in Torry and the Sistema Scotland equivalent in Dundee. Aberdeen City Council and Dundee City Council are struggling to find even the meagre resources that are required to support those transformational music projects for disadvantaged young people.

Will the minister commit to discussing with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy whether fair funding for councils can be enshrined in law to help to protect services in the future?

This week, GPs in the north-east have sounded the alarm that general practice will become an extinct profession. They point the finger at a

“blatant and shameful lack of support”

from the Scottish Government—that is a direct quote. In the north-east, Friockheim medical centre, Invergowrie medical centre, Wallacetown health centre, Burghead and Hopeman GP surgeries and Fyvie Oldmeldrum Medical Group either have closed, will close or have handed back their contract.

Audit Scotland has warned again today that the key target to increase the GP workforce by 2027 is “not on track”. Can the First Minister explain why the action that her Government is taking to address GP recruitment and retention is failing miserably? It is putting patient safety at risk.

I note that the petition uses the word “urgently” and that it is dated 20 December 2021. These are systemic issues and I think that we all agree that they need to be looked at. It is important to make sure that the women feel listened to and that services are not just centred around the central belt. For example, there are two mother and baby units in Scotland and they are both in the central belt. One was supposedly planned for Grampian, but it was kicked into the long grass—

My question is for Matthew McClelland from the Nursing and Midwifery Council. You talk about whistleblowing. What mechanisms are in place for staff to raise safety concerns?

Will a PSC add value to the processes that are in place?

I think that it is very important for us as a committee to progress something specifically on women’s health in rural areas.