FOR Dr Philippa Whitford, the past year of the Covid pandemic has emphasised what is important in life.
The SNP MP said looking after people with cancer during her career as a breast surgeon meant it has always been clear to her what should be treasured.
“It is the people you love, the people around you and your community,” she said. “That was always there for me and I think Covid just emphasises that even more.”
As the UK-wide lockdown approached a year ago, Whitford, who is the SNP’s Westminster health spokeswoman, recalled her feelings of impatience that it had not been introduced earlier by Boris Johnson.
“Around February and the beginning of March was the most frustrating time for me,” she said.
“We were having regular statements and urgent questions on Covid. I was raising issues like asymptomatic spread which were dismissed.
“I just felt like there was a narrative of it wouldn’t dare come here, this is Great Britain. There was a real note of complacency.”
In the first few months of lockdown, Whitford volunteered to go back to the NHS to help out and worked on projects focusing on liaising between the NHS and social care.
She said: “It felt important to me personally to try to help out in some way. I wasn’t on the frontline, they didn’t need me in the breast cancer service, so it was more in a backroom strategic role.
“One of the really inspiring things was seeing all the traditional blockages to innovation just fall over.
“It was very much you had people from different sectors, from community, from social care, from the hospice, from the hospitals saying what do we need to do and how do we do it.”
At the same time, there was a rise in demand in her role as an MP, with her team working from home while trying to deal with concerns of constituents.
“The initial months of the first wave were just incredibly busy – literally I would say the daily incoming emails went up by three to four times, so it was immensely busy for the team,” she said.
With the pandemic bringing everything to a sudden halt, Whitford said it could provide an opportunity to think about how society should be built back.
But she said she was not looking forward to returning to Westminster and facing the “relentless contempt” towards SNP MPs.
“There is also the whole direction of travel – the narrative is global Britain but they are cutting international development, they are increasing Trident warheads, they are cutting the right to protest or march,” she added.
“I think it is a pretty scary direction the UK is going in.
“I used to say in 2014 I wanted Scotland to be independent as I believed it could be better.
“I now think Scotland must be independent as we could be so much worse.”
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