Holyrood may have been in recess since the end of June; however, MSPs across Scotland are gearing up for early September, when parliament begins one of the final legs toward the 2026 Scottish Elections.
No doubt, politicians across Scotland will be steadily shifting into election mode over the coming months.
Speeches will start to become barely disguised party-political broadcasts, and the SNP’s record in government over the last 18 years will be more scrutinised than ever.
Given the state of public services across much of Scotland, I doubt the SNP will be looking forward to this level of scrutiny.
Because when it comes to running the key public services which we all depend on – for which the SNP have been responsible for the best part of two decades – the main words that come to mind are mismanagement and incompetence.
For a shocking example of this mismanagement, we need look no further than Scotland’s NHS, which has spent recent years battling with record-long waiting lists and frontline services which are stretched to breaking point.
Just last week, we learned that more than a third of patients are waiting over four hours to be seen in Scotland’s A&E departments.
The picture is even worse here in Forth Valley, where more than half of A&E patients must wait over four hours to be seen, and over a quarter of patients have to wait a staggering eight hours.
Problems such as this were inevitable after years of failed workforce planning, rushed NHS ‘recovery plans’, and a distinct lack of clear political leadership.
Given all of this mismanagement, it was unsurprising when we recently received the deeply concerning news that NHS Forth Valley is having to make cuts across all of its departments.
This news came after the health board discovered a £38 million hole in its budget – with Forth Valley’s level of funding failing to keep up with increasing demand for local services.
Senior bosses within the NHS Board speak about fixing this shortfall with ‘cost improvement plans’ or ‘waste reduction’.
In reality, however, these cuts could affect frontline services for all those who depend on them.
Unfortunately, none of this is surprising given that the SNP Health Secretary, Neil Gray, recently said he was ‘pleased to see independence at the top of the agenda’, after First Minister John Swinney announced his latest plan to achieve a second independence referendum.
Of course, the truth is that independence is nowhere near the top of the agenda for the overwhelming majority of hard-working Scots – and it is time that John Swinney, Neil Gray, and everyone else in this SNP Government hears this message loud and clear.
Residents of Forth Valley deserve an effective, reliable health service that delivers true value for taxpayers’ money.
The constitutional grandstanding we’re hearing from the SNP will do nothing to deliver this.
Instead of keeping their heads in the sand on this issue, the Scottish Government should listen to the concerns of health experts and frontline staff and adopt our common-sense plans to get more resources to frontline services – where they are needed more desperately than ever.
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