How SNP incompetence has created a two-tier health service in Scotland

This weekend at our party conference, we set out the difference a Scottish Labour government will make. We set out how we will end SNP decline and fundamentally transform Scotland for the better – from strengthening our economy to supporting our schools to making our NHS fit for the future.

For too long, the SNP has taken a sticking-plaster approach to running the country – it is a government trying to make it through the week ahead instead of planning for the future.

A few pounds here and there to bring us back from the brink of disaster; short-term solutions that fix one problem and create another; targets set and promises made, but nothing ever delivered. Nowhere is this incompetence clearer or more damaging than in their reckless mismanagement of health and social care.

Waiting times for NHS treatment are now so long that they have effectively undermined the fundamental principles of the health service (Picture: Hannah McKay) | POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Exhausted, demoralised NHS staff

It’s left our NHS at breaking point, with almost one-in-six Scots on waiting lists for vital tests and treatments and over 100,000 waiting more than a year. GPs are becoming increasingly difficult to see. A&Es are dangerously overstretched and patients are being treated in corridors because there aren’t enough beds.

Meanwhile, thousands of patients are stuck in hospital despite being well enough to leave because they cannot get a social care package.

Under the SNP, hardworking NHS staff are exhausted and demoralised, patients are being put in danger, and the NHS’s founding principles have been betrayed. With thousands forced to go private, can we really say we have an NHS free and available at the point of need?

The stakes could not be higher, but the SNP is either unwilling or unable to deal with this crisis. Health Secretaries and First Ministers have come and gone and NHS recovery plans have been written and abandoned – but things haven’t got any better.

The SNP cannot keep asking patients to accept the unacceptable and staff to do the impossible. It cannot continue to gamble with the very future of our NHS. In 2026, we can choose a new direction for health and social care with Scottish Labour.

Scandal of corridor care

At conference this weekend, I set out what a Scottish Labour government would do differently to protect our treasured NHS and support social care services. There is a national waiting-list emergency and we will use every avenue possible to reduce them.

That includes maximising existing capacity by letting patients travel between health boards, creating additional capacity in the system, and using digital solutions for faster diagnosis and treatment. We will end the 8am rush for GP appointments and bring back the family doctor by renegotiating the GP contract.

We will ease the dangerous pressure on hospitals and tackle the scandal of corridor care by delivering additional social care packages. This will free up thousands of beds and make sure that patients can get out of hospital when they’re ready.

We will make sure the money follows the patients and bureaucracy doesn’t stand in the way of care by overhauling archaic structures and building a system that prioritises frontline services.

We will end the SNP’s two-tier health service and fix our NHS so that it is once again free at the point of need. That’s the change of direction that Scotland needs.

Jackie Baillie MSP is Scottish Labour’s health spokesperson