Chamber and committees

You will not be getting back in, because we are getting some very long questions.

Will the member take an intervention?

Yes, I agree.

I will continue to quote Lauren Bennie, who said:

“The difference between a 33-week wait and a 19-week wait can be devastating for people”,

as Alex Cole-Hamilton just outlined, especially those

“with arthritis whose physical and mental health are worsening by the day, slowly eroding their independence. Edinburgh University researchers found that people’s quality of life significantly deteriorates after each six-month period of waiting.”

People with arthritis who are waiting for hip and knee replacements live with severe pain, struggle to move around and are often unable to work. In terms of healthcare economics, those operations are some of the most effective treatments that the NHS offers, so it is unacceptable that people face long waits or financial instability to access them.

We increasingly hear from people who feel that they have no choice but to use savings or borrow to pay for surgery privately. The financial hit is especially devastating when living costs are soaring. Before I get any interventions, yes, that risks widening health inequalities further and thus has to change.

We must remember that pain is crippling and debilitating. People have little or no confidence in any practical steps to reduce the impact of their pain on their daily life. Reliance on pain medication is very high, and a lot of self-management resources have been suspended due to the pandemic. Medication options, from prescription to over the counter, take a toll, too—from fatigue to nausea and, dare I say, constipation. They, too, impact on the ability to work and have a normal life. We call on the SNP Government to introduce prehab for people awaiting treatment, so that people can live well while waiting. Reliance on pain medication is very high and impacts the quality of many people’s lives.

The cabinet secretary told us that all would be well when he brandished his NHS recovery plan in August 2021. He then claimed that everything was under control when presenting the winter resilience plan in October. Now he has been forced to concede that everything is far from well.

Rather than work collaboratively with other politicians who have plenty to offer in what is undoubtedly a national emergency, on Tuesday of last week, Mr Yousaf was utterly dismissive of the Conservative NHS action plan, which was produced by someone who knows what they are talking about. The Scottish Conservative’s 14-point recovery plan includes streamlined specialist super Saturdays, the expansion of same-day operations and more off-peak scanning.

My colleague Dr Gulhane is a practising doctor and a former orthopaedic registrar. As he said, he spent the holiday touring practices to get a genuine feel for what is happening across the country. I have spent more than 25 years working with healthcare providers in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland.

The SNP has spent years hollowing out our local councils. With savage funding cuts on the horizon, its plans for a national care service would scrap local accountability and impose total ministerial control.

Our NHS is on its knees. Waiting times for A and E and cancer treatment are at their worst-ever levels, yet more parliamentary time was set aside last week to discuss independence than was spent on our failing health service. As Jackie Baillie stated, it is only in Opposition debate time that we get to discuss the issues in detail.

Today, as one in seven people languishes on a waiting list, I want to focus on waiting times. The real-time impact of pausing and restarting elective surgery is that we never really know the accuracy of median waiting times. All that patients are asking for is clear and accurate data on approximate waits.

Public health data as it is presented shows average waits of 19 weeks. However, that data uses the average median and does not count urgent cases. As Dr Gulhane mentioned, some health boards are not doing any elective surgeries, so it is impossible to deliver a four-week wait.

Patients get angry and distressed when they deal with moving medical goalposts. They have this unrealistic ideal of their waiting time, so they have increased phone contact with their GP and make more calls to hospital secretaries as they wonder where they are on the waiting list. All of that adds to the daily pressures that our front-line staff are facing.

Lauren Bennie, Scotland head of Versus Arthritis, said:

“People need clear and regular communication about when they can expect to receive surgery and what information and support is available while waiting. Many fear being forgotten or feel abandoned to manage their pain alone.”

I am in my concluding remarks.

Last week in his statement, Mr Yousaf admitted that

“it is right for health boards to retain decision-making at local level so that they can determine how best to flex their services”.—[Official Report, 10 January 2023; c 37.]

Perhaps his Government should heed his own advice when it considers wasting £1.7 billion on ripping social care from local authorities.

Thank you, Deputy First Minister, for a very helpful session. I thank everyone for their time. We will consider our final agenda items in private.

We move to questions from Ross Greer.

Thank you, Deputy First Minister, for managing that question so delicately.

We move to questions from Kaukab Stewart.

Thank you for that commitment, Deputy First Minister. We move to questions from Stephen Kerr.

We will move to questions from Willie Rennie.