2. To ask the First Minister when she last met ScotRail. (S5F-00392)

Scottish Government ministers meet ScotRail regularly. The Minister for Transport and the Islands did so most recently last week.

We discovered today that ScotRail is not the only thing that is going off the rails under the Government. The independent experts at Audit Scotland gave our national health service under the Scottish National Party a check-up, and the results of a decade of SNP control produced a grim diagnosis. Funding is not keeping pace with increasing demand and patient need. Only one of eight key targets has been met. A workforce crisis that has been brewing for years is getting worse.

Those problems did not appear overnight—they are the legacy of a decade of the SNP controlling our NHS.

The First Minister was the health secretary for the best part of those 10 years. Does she accept full responsibility for the problems that it now faces?

The First Minister:

Yes—as First Minister, I accept full responsibility for what happens in the health service. I also accept responsibility for the fact that the health service budget is £3 billion higher than it was when we took office, for the fact that there are 11,000 more staff working in our health service than there were when we took office and for the fact that, whether we look at in-patient waiting times or out-patient waiting times, those times are lower today than they were when the Government took office. I accept responsibility for all that and more.

I accept responsibility for the manifesto commitment that we made in the recent election, whereby we said that, over this parliamentary session, we would build on the increases that we had already made and increase the health budget by £500 million more than inflation. Kezia Dugdale has a cheek to talk about funding in our health service when she authored a manifesto that promised the lowest funding increase to the health service of any party that contested the election. Perhaps she should put her own house in order.

The First Minister can read out every statistic that she likes from her big book of excuses, but there is a human cost to a decade of SNP mismanagement. We can just ask the patients. One patient who is not satisfied is James Neilson from Fauldhouse. He was a miner who had worked down the pit his whole life. He has a blocked artery in his leg. He wanted to be in the public gallery today but, when I spoke to him this morning, he was in too much pain to leave the house.

He has been told that he will have to wait seven months for an appointment. That is a seven-month wait not for treatment but for an appointment.

We have heard the First Minister reel off a lot of statistics. Will she explain to Mr Neilson why, under her Government, he has to wait seven months to see a consultant?

The First Minister:

I absolutely agree with Kezia Dugdale that behind all the statistics that all of us cite on the health service lie human beings. I am happy to ask the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport to look into Mr Neilson’s case, but I will not comment on it today without having all the details; it would not be reasonable for me to do so.

I repeat the point that I made earlier. As long as one patient in our health service is waiting too long, that is one too many. I will be the first to say that and to say that we have more work to do. However, I look back at the situation that existed when we took office. I repeat that, at that time, 70 per cent of out-patients were seen within the target of 12 weeks. Today, the figure is 85 per cent. That is not good enough, but it means that we are performing well and that the health service is performing better than it was when we took office.

I say again that we have a great deal to be proud of in the way in which our health service operates and the services that it delivers. That is why there is record patient satisfaction in our health service. Of course, there is much work still to do, which is why the Government is focused on doing it.

The problem for Opposition leaders is that they forget that people are sitting at home and watching our exchanges, so those people will know that I did not disregard the case of Mr Neilson and that I said that I would be happy to look into it. If Kezia Dugdale wants to pass me his details, I will do so.

People also know the facts that underpin all this. I am not standing here and saying that everything is perfect in our health service, and I am not saying that there is not more work to be done. I am pointing to the progress that has been made and on which we are determined to build.

Kezia Dugdale talked about nurses. Our nurses do a fantastic job in the health service; they work incredibly hard and in difficult circumstances. However, there are 2,000 more nurses in our health service now than there were when the Government took office.

There are more staff, there is a larger budget and waiting times are lower. Progress has been made, but much work still has to be done. That is why the Government is not just investing in our health service but determined to undertake reforms in our health service, to make sure that it is fit for today and for the future.

Mr Neilson does not want to know what was happening 10 years ago; he wants to know when he will see a doctor.

The First Minister might not want to listen to me on the NHS and she might want to disregard Mr Neilson’s case, but she cannot ignore what NHS staff are saying. One in four general practitioner surgeries are short of staff and nine out of 10 nurses say that their workload is getting worse.

This summer, the First Minister set up a listening exercise, but she is not listening to patients, doctors and nurses. She should stop living in denial. When will she wake up to the NHS crisis that started on her watch?