Chamber and committees

Earlier, we heard that all policy should be focused on healthcare, and we have heard from members of the panel that workforce planning should come before a remobilisation plan. We have also heard about the diverse careers that are available to people in health and social care—including dentistry; I will not ignore that one.

My question is for Sue Robertson, given that we have a short timeframe. Is the cap on Scottish young people getting into medical schools and universities in Scotland negatively affecting long-term recruitment and our ability to create a sustainable workforce plan?

I am a councillor at the City of Edinburgh Council and my salary is donated in full via the give-as-you-earn scheme. I own 100 per cent of the issued share capital of MEDinburgh Ltd, which was a company involved in healthcare sales and marketing. It was deregistered on Companies House at the weekend and has not traded since May 2021.

We went into this public health crisis with a pre-existing mental health crisis. An obvious solution would be to have more people who are familiar with recognising mental health issues and providing early support. Recent mental health stats make for grim reading. Almost 1,700 children have been waiting more than a year to start treatment, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists has warned that the number of child and adolescent mental health psychiatrists has fallen in the past year. There is a struggle to recruit people in West Lothian, where waiting times have spiralled—from being a year to being open ended. Does the First Minister agree that people must receive support before they reach crisis point? If so, what is being done now to provide support?

The past 18 months have been a time of unprecedented pressure in the NHS, but the problem is historical. In 2018, only 20 per cent of ambulance staff thought that there were enough staff to do their jobs and, even before the pandemic, the number of ambulances that recorded turnaround times of more than an hour had doubled. GMB Scotland recently said:

“The understaffing crisis in the ambulance service was already understood pre-Covid”.

Why did the SNP not recognise that at that time? Why did it actively choose to ignore the historical call from front-line staff to fix the problem before we reached the crisis? Does the cabinet secretary agree that the forthcoming winter plan that we are waiting for should have formed an essential component of the NHS recovery plan?

It is clear that the pandemic has exposed the weaknesses that were there before. We have heard concerning reports from NHS staff that the Golden Jubilee hospital, Stobhill hospital and the Royal hospital for children are seriously understaffed and are struggling to cope with the volume of patients and that treatment at each hospital site is now severely limited. Can the First Minister confirm whether any departments have been closed to new patients and whether elective surgery has been stopped in any of those hospitals?

During the pandemic, many other healthcare professionals—optometrists, pharmacists, nurses—saw patients face to face. Does the minister not believe that now is the time that GPs started doing the same?

I think that I have a supplementary question after Mr Johnson.

This time, Presiding Officer.

Last week, Scottish National Party members of Parliament in Westminster voted against £1.1 billion of extra national health service funding. Even though our health service is in crisis and the SNP Government has called for more money from the UK Government, SNP MPs refused to back an annual extra £1.1 billion for Scotland’s NHS and social services. Will the cabinet secretary explain why the SNP MPs voted against giving more money to the NHS and social care in Scotland?

We have heard a lot about the development of the review of the records of the 200,000 women who have been permanently excluded from the screening programme. How long does the minister expect the review to take?

Scotland’s accident and emergency service is in crisis. Waiting times have spiralled out of control and referral times are equally bad. Our workforce in the NHS is at breaking point. A fifth of patients, and more than a quarter of all vulnerable children, are waiting too long for their mental health treatment.

There is no doubt that the creation of a national care service would be a massive undertaking. Has the SNP reached a new low in self-awareness? I am sure that I am not alone in wondering why the Scottish Government thinks that it can run a national care service, given all the issues that it faces running the long-established NHS. The drug death rate has almost tripled on the SNP’s watch, deaths caused by alcohol are at their highest level since 2008, waiting times for residential rehab can be up to a year, Frank’s law has not yet been fully implemented, and yet the SNP wants more powers and responsibilities, when it is incapable of using those that it already has.

We know that, under the SNP Government, Scotland is facing an A and E crisis and that NHS waiting lists are faring no better. We have heard that, before the pandemic, 450,000 people were on the waiting lists and now that figure is topping 600,000. The crisis is an indicator that the entire system is fractured. Behind every statistic is a person—often in chronic, debilitating pain—or a family who are desperate for help. They have all been failed by the SNP, which has shown no leadership or detailed plan of action.

The SNP has neglected the NHS and the people of Scotland for years. The SNP should stop trying to rewrite history when the facts clearly tell a different story. The pandemic did not cause this crisis—the SNP did. Bed capacity had been routinely operating at 95 per cent before the pandemic. The SNP spoke of admissions, but not of discharges.

The public have demonstrated immense gratitude to all those working in the NHS throughout the pandemic and beforehand. Covid has made NHS staff work harder and faster than ever before. I know that at first hand because I have stood and worked alongside them for many years. I am not telling how many years—it gives my age away.

Other amendments focus on the workforce challenges. One in 17 people already work in the NHS in Scotland and there is now a longstanding recruitment crisis. Across Scotland, a record 4,854 nursing and midwifery posts are vacant. A significant number of nursing staff are on work-related sick leave through stress and other mental health issues. Where are we going to find the 1,500 new staff for the treatment centres? How long will it take us to train them?

In 2017, SNP ministers pledged to recruit 800 general practitioners by 2027. However, with just over 200 GPs added to the overall national headcount right now, it looks like that target will be missed, too.

Mr Hoy spoke of the 197 warnings that were issued by the Care Inspectorate over staff shortages in care homes. Staffing levels are reaching crisis point in all healthcare sectors across Scotland. There is no overnight solution to the workforce crisis. The SNP’s NHS recovery plan is a flimsy pamphlet that recycles old promises and fails to tackle the longstanding issues—[Interruption.] I have literally 12 seconds left.

The plan is full of gaps. The Scottish Conservatives believe that healthcare professionals should be given the support that they need to end the backlog in treatments in hospitals, restore A and E waiting times, speed up our ambulance service and return to full, face-to-face GP surgeries. Scotland’s NHS needs a real plan to get our health service back on track.