How SNP hid truth about how bad NHS crisis really is
◆ The national treatment centre scandal underlines how the SNP put party interests before the country’s, writes Jackie Baillie
Politics is about serving the people. It’s that duty to do right by people that led me into public service, and it should underpin the actions of all elected representatives: from community councils to the Cabinet. But you cannot serve the people if you cannot be straight with them. The precious link between elected and electorate rests upon the assumption that those in power will put the public interest first and will be clear with the people.
After 17 years of SNP rule in Scotland, this link has been decisively broken. Nowhere is this more clear than in our NHS. Despite warm words from SNP ministers, our NHS has been in crisis for years, with Scots paying the price. Health Secretary after Health Secretary have pledged to get our NHS back on track. All have failed.
But, most shockingly, information released this week has shown the SNP government buried its head in the sand and hid the truth about its failure to strengthen the NHS.
In 2015, the SNP government announced its intention to roll out “national treatment centres” (NTCS) to provide extra capacity for planned care. Progress has been glacial. Nonetheless, faced with soaring waiting lists and A&E departments in disarray, successive SNP Health Secretaries continued to promise these centres would be delivered. As late as January 2024, then Health Secretary Michael Matheson wrote to a Scottish Labour MSP that the 2024-25 budget would allow “all major projects in construction to be completed” despite health chiefs telling constituents any projects without spades in the ground would be delayed for two years.
The following month, new Health Secretary Neil Gray was forced to announce the programme to deliver the promised NTCS would be paused – a hammer-blow to Scotland’s NHS, deep in crisis and at risk of overheating.
The SNP government claimed they had revealed the cancellations as soon as possible and that “a revised infrastructure investment plan will be published in the spring”. Now, Scottish Labour can reveal that the SNP government was aware in autumn last year that its promise to reduce NHS waiting lists was unlikely to be met, with officials advising that the NTC plan should be ditched. Instead, ministers continued to mislead Scots.
Heavily redacted papers published in response to freedom of information requests by Scottish Labour state: “The proposals set out in this [Recovery Road Map – Planned Care] paper will pause the development of the next phase of the NTC programme and the [Programme for Government] commitment to open 10 NTCS (plus the replacement Edinburgh Eye Pavilion).”
This means the truth about the scale of the NHS crisis was shamefully hidden from Scots for almost half a year. Instead of telling the truth about their own failure, this SNP government sought to mislead us all, putting party before country.
Our NHS deserves better. Scotland deserves better. Seventeen years of self-serving SNP failure has left trust in politics fundamentally broken. At the general election, Scots sent the SNP a clear message that enough is enough. It is the duty of Scottish Labour to tackle the politics of deceit and incompetence head on so that we can save our NHS and restore our public services.