NHS crisis: SNP's mass cancellation of new hospitals and health centres is a consequence of incompetence – Jackie Baillie

SNP ministers have squandered their budgets and lives are being put on the line as a result

Having an NHS appointment cancelled is commonplace in Scotland, but having the whole future of the hospital building programme delayed is something else. The SNP now risks failing Scotland’s patients twice over by halting work on vital NHS hospital projects which will set us back for generations to come.

Count them up, some 17 key NHS projects across Scotland are under threat – some have been cancelled, others delayed with no start date in sight. The excuses for not going ahead with these life-saving facilities might vary but the root cause is the same, the SNP’s financial mismanagement of our NHS.

SNP ministers promised patients and staff for years that they would deliver state-of-the-art National Treatment Centres across the country. At party conferences, they boasted about putting these flagship projects front and centre of an NHS recovery plan for increasing capacity and tackling the backlog.

Now we learn that, despite almost 830,000 Scots on waiting lists for tests and treatment, all bets are off. Freedom of Information requests by Labour reveal that the sites in NHS Ayrshire and Arran, NHS Lanarkshire, NHS Lothian, NHS Grampian and NHS Tayside are all delayed.

Big promises

These National Treatment Centres formed a key part of the SNP government’s approach to tackling ever-increasing waiting times. The official reason is that “construction delays and challenges to recruiting a full workforce continue to impact on forecast performance”. This is simply translated as incompetent handling of the NHS at the highest level.

The SNP government made big promises to patients and staff across Scotland about investing in hospital projects. Now ministers have u-turned, instructing health boards to cease all project plans. In the Highlands, projects including redesigning Caithness General Hospital and revamping Raigmore’s maternity services are frozen. The Belford hospital in Fort William is no nearer being replaced.

In the Western Isles, plans for a much-needed community hospital on Barra have sunk below the waves, a bitter disappointment for islanders who have campaigned over 17 years for a new facility. Desperately needed new health centres such as Lochgelly and Kincardine in Fife and East Calder in Lothian are being halted. According to NHS Lothian, “the Scottish Government has advised NHS boards to immediately stop any project development spend, as the Scottish Government does not anticipate starting construction of any new capital projects over the next two years at least”.

These cancellations and delays to vital NHS infrastructure projects will impede the recovery of our NHS and will result in waiting times getting even longer. With almost one in six Scots stuck on NHS waiting lists and vital targets being missed, these delays risk putting more lives at risk.

The SNP is in disarray, a series of ministers have squandered their budgets and, as a result, lives are being put on the line. The people of Scotland should not have to pay the price of SNP chaos and more broken promises. Almost 17 years of SNP devastation of our NHS must end because, as well as leaving towering waiting lists, they are in danger of leaving a derelict health estate.

Only Scottish Labour can be trusted to support our NHS and its dedicated staff so that they can deliver for the people of Scotland.

Jackie Baillie is MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader and her party’s spokesperson for health