Torcuil Crichton

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) for securing this debate on St Andrew’s day and for giving us the opportunity to take stock of the issues and challenges facing Scotland. I will not detain the House for long, Madam Deputy Speaker, because you caught me on the hop—I had hoped to be writing my speech while others made theirs. I will plough on to discuss poor St Andrew. I have been checking in on Scotland’s patron saint, and he does not look very good. As a Scot, his average life expectancy would be just 77 years; his sister, Andrea, could expect to live to 81. Some 26 years into devolution and 18 years into an SNP Government who were meant to make things better, Scotland has the lowest life expectancy not just in the UK, but in the whole of western Europe. But do not worry, because the SNP is coming to the rescue of Scotland’s ailing saint and ailing population—or it would do, if it could get ambulance waiting times in order. In January last year, one patient in Lothian on category red—that is a heart attack situation—had to wait more than 17 hours for an ambulance, and an individual in the highlands this year had to wait for 18 hours. It now takes a median wait of 22 minutes for NHS 24 to be answered in Scotland. The NHS app, which I have had for many years as a patient at the Royal London hospital, will not be available in Scotland until 2030. Why? Because the SNP Scottish Government refused the English NHS app, because the political optics of putting the St Andrew’s cross on an English app just would not look good, so Scots have to wait. Scots are being ill-served. They have been waiting a long time through our revolving carousel of Health Ministers. A rotating carousel of 130 health strategies—one for every seven weeks of this SNP Government—has meant that 618,000 Scots are still waiting for specialist care in Scotland’s NHS. One figure is going up in Scotland’s health scene: the number of private health operations, which is up by 55% since 2019. Those are not just for those who can afford them, but those who need them because the waiting lists are so long that they have no alternative. Scotland has a large number of health boards, with 14 health boards, 31 integration authorities and numerous quangos, all under tight Scottish Government control. Mike McKirdy, an eminent surgeon assigned by the Scottish Labour party to assess the future of Scotland’s health, has said it is a “complex structure”. He said that structure “means reforms and improvements are difficult to roll out at scale or pace, while accountability and transparency are easier to avoid.” Scotland is being ill-served in its health, and the ailing St Andrew is being ill-served by this SNP Government when it comes to health.