Audit Scotland's report on NHS may explain why SNP is failing this national treasure so badly

The SNP needs to be as bold as the Westminster government in trying to improve the governance of the health service

As the number of people facing two-year waits for NHS outpatient appointments hit a new record high – the latest in a long-running series of bad news about the health service – it seems clear that, whatever the SNP’s plan is, it’s simply not working. At the end of March, a staggering total of nearly 560,000 people were waiting for an outpatient appointment and more than 5,200 had been waiting for two years.

The news came as Audit Scotland published a report on the important, but rather dry, subject of ‘governance’. It warned that the planning and governance of healthcare was becoming increasingly complex, and this was limiting the ability of NHS boards to drive reform. The mix of local, regional and national organisations also made decision-making and accountability difficult.

Stephen Boyle, Auditor General for Scotland, said: “The delivery of NHS services must be reformed for Scotland’s health service to remain affordable and sustainable. NHS Scotland’s governance arrangements are key to delivering that reform, but they need to be strengthened.”

The SNP needs to stop managing the decline of the NHS and start making dramatic improvements (Picture: Christopher Furlong) | Getty Images

A source of sorrow

This may actually be a key reason why the SNP has appeared almost paralysed in the face of the NHS’s growing problems. South of the Border Health Secretary Wes Streeting took the decision to scrap NHS England and bring it back into the Heath Department. “By stripping back layers of red tape and bureaucracy, more resources will be put back into the front line rather than being spent on unnecessary admin,” the Labour government said.

Scotland’s ministers need to be similarly bold and could make a start by reducing the number of health boards. The question is, however, whether the SNP is actually interested in getting into the complex process of redesigning a massive bureaucratic system to make it more efficient and more effective.

That sounds like a considerable amount of hard work with the risk of making a spectacular mess. It’s much easier to simply ‘blame Westminster’ for any problems and carry on managing the decline of what was once a source of considerable national pride, but is now a source of sorrow for those who remember its glory days.