Resuming National Health Services

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 2 June 2020.

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Photo of Anas Sarwar Anas Sarwar Labour

Like so many members have done, I start by thanking all our NHS and social care staff for their commitment before and during the crisis. It is no exaggeration to say that thousands of our fellow citizens have risked their lives in order to try to save lives throughout it. To every single one of them, and to all our front-line workers, I say a genuine thank you.

It is right that we applaud them and it is right that we thank them, but what is more important is what we do after we applaud. That means properly resourcing them, properly paying them and properly supporting them well beyond the end of the crisis.

I welcome the tone that has been adopted by the health secretary, and the fact that we have had this time to debate the next steps for the NHS. It is important to recognise that all was not well in our NHS before the Covid-19 crisis. Too many of our NHS staff were telling us that they were undervalued, overworked and underpaid. Too many patients were having to wait too long for vital treatment or were having their hospital operations cancelled. Too many staff were working far too many shifts, with not enough support.

Far too many people were waiting in hospital as a result of delayed discharge. To give a graphic example of that, the delayed discharge rate was the equivalent of every bed in the Queen Elizabeth university hospital being occupied every day for a year. That is how many days we were losing to delayed discharge in our national health service.

As we move out of what we hope has been the peak of the Covid-19 crisis and into the next phase for our NHS, we should acknowledge the challenges that we had before it, and think about how we will address them.

Many members have said that the NHS is still open. That our NHS is open for other forms of care is a really important message to get across to the public. I will touch more on that in a moment.

We should acknowledge that we are seeing many innovations in the NHS because of Covid-19. Many things that we were previously told were not possible and could not be done quickly—for example, online consultations and sharing of medical information with pharmacies—have been done very quickly. We have been told in the past that all those things were blockages, but they now happen very quickly. I hope that beyond the crisis we can maintain some of those developments and the innovative thinking that there has been throughout the crisis.

On the next phase, we need to ensure that we support all front-line workers with adequate amounts of PPE.

There is also still an issue with testing. I do not like it when Governments—whether UK or Scottish Governments—hide behind capacity and do not talk about actual testing figures. I do not want us to talk about capacity; I want us to talk about tests. It is right that we shout down Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock when they talk about capacity, but we should apply the same to the Scottish Government. It is unacceptable that we have the lowest testing rate of any of the four nations of the UK. If we are, as would be right, to make test, trace and isolate the way in which we get out of the crisis, we need to test more. We need to test, test, test.

As part of the approach, we should be implementing a test guarantee for any individual who wants a coronavirus test. We have the capacity, so we should guarantee that they will have a test within 24 hours and then get their result within 24 hours—24 hours to get a test, then 24 hours to get the result. We can implement that guarantee across Scotland.

I, too, am worried about unintended consequences. I have previously raised the issue in the chamber, and Miles Briggs raised it in his speech. I fear that there might be the unintended consequence of people losing their lives because of the response to Covid-19 rather than because of Covid-19 itself.

One example is our cancer services. I am worried because there have been 2,000 fewer referrals for early diagnosis; because people have not been able to access vital cancer treatment through the crisis; because lots of treatment will have been delayed; and because we have a too-slow phased approach to reopening our cancer services. Cancer remains Scotland’s biggest killer. If we are to confront Scotland’s biggest killer, we must restart cancer services as soon as possible—without delay.

Other members have mentioned dental services, but we will also have a mental health challenge. We will have a mental health pandemic after the Covid-19 pandemic because of the stress and strain of the Covid-19 pandemic and its consequences. How we address the mental health pandemic that is coming will be very important.

I realise that I am short of time, but I want to briefly mention some other issues. The cabinet secretary rightly outlined an NHS improvement plan. What stage is that plan at now, considering that we will have a much bigger treatment backlog?

There was previously a promise to amend the patients charter in terms of giving patients accurate times for how long they will wait for treatment. What communication is there with patients now?

We are still too slow in getting people access to their loved ones in acute care who might be in the final period of their lives. It is not right that in three weeks we will probably be able to be 2m from a stranger in a Primark store but not 2m from a loved one in a hospital. I appreciate that the cabinet secretary has said that that can be done now, but it can be done only in their final moments. I would much prefer the situation to be that a person who is in the final period of their life—perhaps their final weeks or months—can have access to their family members not just in their final minutes or hours. That is an important difference that we need to make.

I know that there is a longer debate to be had about care homes, but I will stop there. I look forward to hearing the cabinet secretary’s response.