Doing more to support the NHS

It can scarcely be said often enough that the hard working men and women in the NHS make Herculean efforts to keep Scotland healthy on a daily basis. Everybody in Scotland has either received care from the professionals in our health service, or have relatives who have been cared for.

Because of this, the NHS enjoys a special place in everybody’s hearts. It is a service staffed by people that are truly dedicated to this nation’s health, which is why I am so pleased by the level of investment that the SNP Government has been able to put into improving the NHS.

Figures released in December show that the levels of frontline staff working in the health service have reached unprecedented highs. There are now more GPs, medical consultants, nurses, dentists and midwives working in Scottish hospitals than there have ever been before. This will be welcome news to people across Banff & Buchan, as improving upon the high level of care that the NHS provides is only possible with higher staffing levels.

There are now 15, 348 people working in NHS Grampian, looking after our health and the health of our loved ones compared with 14, 741 under the previous administration.

And we can already see the tangible results that the increased staff are having if we look at the improvements to waiting times being delivered across Scotland.

Thanks to the £50 million investment the Scottish Government has put into the NHS, people are waiting less time for treatment in A & E than under the previous administration, more people are registered with an NHS dentist, and 99.9% of patients are waiting less than the targeted eighteen weeks for outpatient consultations and for inpatient or day case treatment.

Since the SNP came to power, the number of people across Scotland waiting more than nine weeks for key tests has fallen from over 10, 000 to just 7. Because of this, the Scottish Government has targeted even more improvements to waiting times in coming years. The SNP is determined to support the magnificent work that the NHS does in looking after Scotland’s health, and we are investing more than ever before to achieve this.

Folly of privatising the Royal Mail

The UK Government has indicated that it is prepared to do what Margaret Thatcher dared not and partially privatise the Royal Mail. Why the Westminster Government seems incapable of understanding the vital nature of the lifeline services that the Royal Mail and the Post Office provide is simply beyond me.

If this comes to pass, the partial privatisation can only result in job losses and will pose a threat to the universal service that means even remote parts of the country have a right to receive postal deliveries on every working day. Many of the arguments being used to try and justify this proposed move are based on comparisons with other European postal services, but ignore the fact that the Royal Mail offers a far more extensive service than is available in other countries.

The postal service offered by the Royal Mail is not just another business, but has a unique social role that the Westminster Government has completely failed to recognise. I desperately hope that this move can be prevented, and know that the SNP group in Westminster will do everything it can to highlight the folly of these proposals. The last thing that residents of Banff & Buchan want is to see the Royal Mail damaged further by another half-baked attempt at privatisation.