7. To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to reduce the backlog of elective surgical procedures that have arisen in the NHS Grampian area due to the Covid-19 pandemic. (S5O-05063)

Published figures for NHS Grampian on 30 December 2020 show 10,680 patients waiting more than 12 weeks for surgical procedures. We are, of course, aware of the current pressures and we anticipated them in our work to respond to the Covid pandemic, which is why we published in November the clinical prioritisation framework for elective care, which sets out the principles that national health service boards follow when considering decisions around prioritising cases on their elective care waiting lists during the Covid-19 pandemic.

At the same time, NHS Grampian, like other boards, is also in the process of completing its plan for restarting services in 2021-22, as we successfully suppress the virus. These plans will seek to balance the need to address the backlog with the need to provide front-line staff with the time and support that they require to recover from the significant pressure that they have been working under for the past 12 months.

According to the latest data, in December, planned operations in the NHS Grampian area stood at the second-highest rate of any health board. That is in addition to procedures postponed since March last year, which number well into the thousands. We understand that hospitals must try to prioritise treating the Covid virus, but these are critical operations and the effect on patients of cancellation could be severe. Can the Cabinet secretary assure me that NHS Grampian will have everything that it needs to get through the backlog? Further, when will my constituents again be seen within the statutory waiting times?

Mr Mason is absolutely right to say that these are critical questions and critical operations, not least for the individuals who are waiting to have them. That is the point of the prioritisation framework. It is an iterative exercise that is clinically led. The framework itself is clinically written in order to ensure that a patient’s status and the criticality of their operation are continually updated, according to how they are progressing.

That is also the point of the plans that I just outlined briefly. The plans will come to the Scottish Government at the end of this month—that is, by the start of next week—and we will then be able to consider them and think about how we can continue to resource our health boards to increasingly return to non-Covid healthcare as we successfully combat the Covid pandemic.

Of course, one thing cannot happen without the other. The measures that we take as a Government to continue to suppress the virus to its lowest possible level, all the restrictions that we ask the public to comply with—and we thank them for doing that—the vaccination programme, the testing programme and so on are all of a piece. We cannot pick one out without also considering the others.

As we make progress, I will, of course, be happy to update the member on NHS Grampian’s particular approach.