THE Conservative MSP Miles Briggs, the party’s health spokesman, has accused the SNP government in Scotland of mismanaging the NHS in Scotland as a result of a £26 million overtime payment bill last year (NHS Scotland runs up £26m nurses' overtime bill, The National, February 24).
In his criticism, Mr Briggs gave no recognition to the fact that this was a reduction on the previous year’s overtime payment bill.
But I would like to ask Mr Briggs, in the midst of the chaos that is Brexit, what his party’s proposals are for free movement of EU citizens, which will have a massive impact on our future provision of NHS/social care services in Scotland and may well cause future overtime payments to rise substantially.
And can I finally establish, is Mr Briggs in the same Conservative Party who are running the NHS in England?
Catriona C Clark
Falkirk
THIS is a non-story. The Scottish NHS budget in 2016-17 was £13 billion. £26 million spent on overtime. That is 0.2 per cent of the budget.
Bob Cotton
via thenational.scot
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