12-hour waits for thousands in A&E should shame SNP. Their response should shame us all

Another day, another piece of evidence that the NHS is falling apart. According to new figures from Public Health Scotland, nearly 40,800 patients waited for longer than four hours in accident and emergency departments in August, with 13,300 there for eight hours or more and 5,400 waiting in excess of 12 hours.

The figure of 69.4 per cent of patients who were admitted, transferred or discharged within the four-hour target time was the lowest ever recorded for that month – worse than Augusts during the height of the pandemic. Remember, the NHS is supposed to be recovering from its extraordinary efforts during Covid and the backlogs it created, yet things just seem to be getting worse and worse.

The NHS is supposed to be recovering from its extraordinary efforts during the Covid pandemic (Picture: Neil Hall) | Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Responding to the figures, Health Secretary Neil Gray trotted out the same usual defence lines, saying the pressure on the NHS was “not unique to Scotland, with similar challenges being felt right across the UK”.

He added they were “working to address” the age-old issue of delayed discharge, aka bed blocking, the source of many hospital delays, with “an increased focus” on effective planning. The SNP government has been working on this for years, yet still it remains a serious problem. Perhaps, as with the rise of Scotland’s drug deaths to shockingly high levels, the SNP took their “eye off the ball”, to quote Nicola Sturgeon.

Cost-effective and compassionate NHS

Unless Scotland stops responding to the endless decline of the NHS with a weary shrug of the shoulders and starts demanding much, much better from our government, we are going to lose the health service.

Increasing numbers of people are taking out private health insurance because they worry, rightly, that the NHS won’t be there when they need it. If this becomes the norm, our comprehensive, compassionate and highly cost-effective system of healthcare will turn into an underfunded service of last resort for the poorest.

If the NHS is to survive, we need politicians prepared to take the bold decisions necessary to save it, not respond to an increasingly dire situation with lame excuses and bland reassurances that, year after year after year, come to almost nothing.