By Chris McCall
Copyright dailyrecord
The SNP Government’s record on delivering healthcare for Scots has been branded “shameful” in a stinging speech today by a senior Labour minister. Wes Streeting , the UK Health Secretary, compared the Scottish Nationalists to Reform UK in comments likely to infuriate members of John Swinney’s Cabinet. The MP insisted Anas Sarwar could help revitalise Scotland’s NHS despite the Scottish Labour leader’s party trailing the SNP in the polls. Speaking at the Labour conference in Liverpool, Streeting said: “Whether it’s English nationalism with Reform, Scottish nationalism with the SNP or Welsh nationalism with Plaid, we’ll take them all on. “With Anas in Scotland together we’ll rebuild the NHS as a British success story.” Streeting insisted Labour had a “dire inheritance” at the last general election “but we have an even more power inheritance in our party of hope, optimism, courage”. He also took aim at the SNP for failing to roll-out a nationwide NHS app, similar to the product already available to patients in England. MyCare.scot will eventually give patients a digital identity and allow them to access personal information and the national service finder system – but it won’t be fully rolled out across Scotland until 2030 at the earliest. But Streeting reserved his strongest criticism for Reform leader Nigel Farage, who he described as the “snake oil salesman of British politics”. He told the conference: “We must win another fight too, one against the poison of post-truth politics. At Reform’s conference, a discredited doctor claimed that the Covid vaccine gave our royal family cancer. “This man wasn’t just some fringe figure – he’s Reform’s health adviser. And these anti-vax lies have consequences: they’ve led to the return of diseases we thought we defeated – measles, whooping cough, children dying from preventable illness in this the 21st Century. “When Farage was asked whether he’d side with medical scientists, he said, ‘I wouldn’t side with anybody’ – anti-science, anti-reason anti-health. “Nigel Farage is a snake oil salesman of British politics, and it’s time to stop buying what he’s selling.” It comes as John Swinney was today warned that without urgent action the NHS could “buckle under winter pressure”, as the latest figures showed more than a third of patients in A&E waited longer than the target time. Health Secretary Neil Gray conceded that the latest weekly data showed that performance against accident and emergency waiting times “is not good enough”. His comments came as Public Health Scotland figures showed that 63.4% of patients in A&E were seen and either admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours in the week ending September 21. This was down from 66% the previous week and continues to be well below the Scottish Government target of having 95% of A&E patients admitted, transferred or discharged within the target time. That four-hour target was missed for 10,232 patients in the week ending September 21, the data showed, with 3,502 (12.5% of patients) in A&E for at least eight hours and 1,462 (5.2%) there for a minimum of 12 hours. The data prompted fresh criticism from opposition parties at Holyrood over the Scottish Government’s failure to tackle long waits in the emergency department. To sign up to the Daily R ecord Politics newsletter, click here
