How SNP's utter negligence is creating two-tier health system in Scotland

As the SNP frantically attempts to find cash to plug its budget blackhole, questions are looming over the risk of cuts to frontline jobs. Our overstretched NHS can ill-afford to lose nurses and doctors, and police officer numbers are already at their lowest since 2007.

The SNP insists “essential” jobs will be protected, but it hasn’t bothered to tell us what this means in practice or how “essential” is defined. Last week, I asked the Finance Secretary how this pledge squares with current vacancy freezes for frontline NHS jobs, to which she said: “Jackie Baillie would know, if she had been listening, that essential posts on the front line – whether they are in health, police or fire – will be protected in terms of recruitment.”

The problem is that just isn’t true. The Finance Secretary would know, if she’d been listening, that NHS staff have been sounding the alarm about jobs disappearing for months now.

By June this year nursing and midwifery posts had already been cut, not frozen but actually cut, by over 1,000, and that’s before the scale of the current financial crisis became public.

With the SNP government now raiding £116 million from this year’s health and social care budget, all pretence of protecting health has gone, and there’s a real risk this grim picture could get worse still.

No jobs for entire class of nurses

Hundreds of nursing and midwifery graduates are reportedly being told by health boards that there are no jobs for them after three years of training paid for by Scottish taxpayers to the tune of about £12m. This includes an entire class of newly qualified paediatric nurses, who went through a full recruitment process only to be told that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde isn’t hiring.

The life-saving NHS is fighting for its survival (Picture: Christopher Furlong) | Getty Images

One in five Scots suffering from pain skip A&E over wait time 'fears', survey shows

When you speak to NHS staff, they tell you about the intense hours they work, the pressure on their services, the staffing shortages and the fears they have for their patients. One complaint I have never heard is an overabundance of staff. Yet frontline jobs are being cut and newly qualified nurses and midwives have found themselves without a job after graduation.

Right now our NHS is fighting for survival. NHS waiting lists are at an all-time high, with the equivalent of almost one in six Scots waiting for tests or treatment. A&E is dangerously overstretched, with thousands of patients facing life-threatening waits and people being treated in corridors.

NHS’s founding principles at risk

Cancer treatment targets are being missed repeatedly, as our NHS struggles to fight Scotland’s biggest killer. The Royal College of Midwives has warned that understaffing is compromising safety in maternity wards.

The very founding promise of our NHS – treatment free at the point of need – is under threat as we drift towards a two-tier healthcare system. Increasingly, people are being forced to empty their savings to pay for private treatment while those who can’t afford to have no choice but to languish on seemingly endless waiting lists.

It is utter negligence for the SNP to cut funding and frontline staff in this context. Once again Scots are being forced to pay the price of their financial mismanagement. The consequences will be devastating.

After 17 years of SNP incompetence and waste, Scotland needs change – and nowhere is that clearer than the sorry state of our NHS.

Jackie Baillie MSP is Scottish Labour’s health spokesperson