Helping households make ends meet

In these difficult economic times, many people in Banff & Buchan are facing enormous strains on their budgets as they struggle to pay the bills. As a result of this, the fact that Aberdeenshire Council has joined local authorities across Scotland to deliver another year’s freeze to the council tax is welcome news to local residents who will not have to stretch their finances even further to meet rising costs.

In the decade before the SNP Government came to power in 2007, average band D council tax payers in Aberdeenshire saw their bills increase by an incredible 93%. Since 2007 those taxes have not risen by a single penny. Had it not been for the Scottish Government’s determination to put an end to the inexorable increases in council tax that was the policy of previous administrations, local residents could now on average expect to be paying an extra £142 a year.

This freeze is important because as well as putting money they would not otherwise have had back into people’s pockets at a time of economic difficulty, it does not increase the financial pressures on those who already struggle most to pay council tax. Pensioners in particular are often hard pressed by the nature of the council tax, which can penalise them for the value of the home they have lived in for many years whilst taking no account of their current income. By having delivered a freeze in council tax for three consecutive years, the Scottish Government is helping to ensure that the pressures faced by many of the most vulnerable in Scottish society do not increase.

Although some other parties in the Scottish Parliament may have refused to back the council tax freeze, it is a policy which the Scottish Government is rightly proud of and one I was glad to vote for and once again see delivered.

Exceeding our targets

Recently published NHS statistics must have made welcome reading for all those involved in caring for cancer patients in the Grampian area. The national target is for 95% of patients who are urgently referred and subsequently diagnosed with cancer to be treated within a maximum of 62 days. Across Scotland this target has been met in each quarter since October-December 2008, with 96.8% of patients in the Grampian area having been treated within the target time in July-September 2009.

While the fact that the target of treating patients within 62 days is being met is encouraging, the figures also show that the average waiting time is just 35 days. This is excellent progress and puts the NHS across Scotland in a good position to meet its new, more challenging target of seeing patients treated within 31 days of a decision to treat them being made, however they are referred, by the end of 2011.

This success at reducing waiting times is a testament to the hard work and dedication of health professionals working in NHS Grampian and across Scotland. Given that only 84.5% of patients were being treated within the target time prior to the Holyrood elections in 2007, it is clear that significant strides have been made to improve the service offered to cancer patients.

Being diagnosed with cancer is obviously an enormously worrying time without the added stress of having to wait an undue length of time before treatment can begin. I believe that the progress that has been made to see national waiting time targets being exceeded is fantastic and reflects the invaluable work being done by Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon to improve our NHS.