Ex-surgeon tears into 'disastrous' Scottish Tory health plan

The party’s leader Douglas Ross unveiled a 32-page document called “A Modern, Efficient and Local NHS” at an event in Edinburgh which included plans to deliver 1000 additional GPs by the end of the next parliamentary term.

He also vowed to give patients a guarantee of seeing a family doctor within a week by raising the proportion of NHS funding to GP services by 12%, while health boards could be sanctioned if they exceed national waiting times.

Ross claimed he would save the NHS from the “breaking point” the Scottish Government had brought it to.

But SNP MP Dr Philippa Whitford, who used to work as a breast cancer surgeon, said the party was living in “cloud cuckoo land” with some of its proposals.

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Before even getting to the key points of the report, Whitford highlighted how the report contained some “odd” examples of people being stuck on waiting lists.

She told The National: “An awful lot of what they say in the report is contradictory.

“They describe an example of someone on a waiting list for a long time because of broken bones, becoming obese and dependent on painkillers.

“What patient with fractures has ever been left on a waiting list? That’s an emergency case.

“Some of it is really quite odd.”

Whitford (below) said the idea of sanctioning health boards for exceeding national waiting times was “completely disastrous” while she insisted the pitch of getting 1000 more GPs needed more explanation.

She added: “You’re talking about a health board that is struggling for whatever reason, and then you’re going to sanction them by cutting their funding.

“How does that help the population that live there? It makes no sense. You’re going to make the problem worse.

“The Scottish Government are trying to deliver 800 extra GPs. All the trainee places have been filled this year and they have been expanded, so more GP practices have become trainee practices and all the placements are full.

“There’s no point in taking on GP trainees and then you can’t get trained because you have four or five trainees who are following around one GP.

“You need to have placements where they will get good experience. This notion of ‘the Scottish Government are struggling to recruit 800, but somehow we’ll recruit 1000 asap’, it’s just cloud cuckoo land. You have to have a plan on how you will deliver that.”

Throughout his speech on the Conservatives’ plan, Ross said he wanted to focus on prevention of health problems with “a new focus on personal responsibility”.

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The Scottish Tory leader said his party would bring forward a vaping restrictions bill that would go beyond legislation proposed by the UK Government, banning vaping in public places and forcing vapes to be sold behind the counter.

Whitford said she agreed with the prevention approach but highlighted how the Conservatives were doing the exact opposite by pushing more people into poverty.

She said: “I agree with a focus on prevention but what has his party done but make poverty worse?

“The Scottish Government realise the best chance of people having good health and healthy life expectancy is investing in them when they are children, or decades down the line you’ll be picking up the pieces.

“That is everything from the baby box to the Best Start Grants and the Scottish Child Payment. That’s how you change things.

“A lot of this is warm words.”

Ross also put forward the idea of creating an NHS app that lets patients see live waiting times, book appointments  and see their medical records.

But Whitford said she was keen to hear where Ross would be getting the money from for such a proposal.

“There has to be an investment in technology but it’s also not the panacea it’s painted to be and it’s very expensive,” she added.

“With the capital budget being slashed in Scotland, where’s the money? His government have cut that.”