Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 27 October 2016.
Kezia Dugdale
Labour
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?
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
