Stephen Daisley: The SNP has failed our most vulnerable children. If they had a shred of decency, they would resign

If I asked you to picture someone on an NHS waiting list, you might imagine an older person, someone with a severe disability, or a sufferer of a rare condition.

You might not imagine a child. Whatever other failings Scotland’s health service might be guilty of, at least children and adolescents are taken care of promptly.

So you would think, but a report from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) in Scotland says otherwise. It finds that 10,512 children are waiting for NHS treatment north of the Border, half of them (5,137) for longer than 12 weeks.

The rate of paediatric patients in this position has grown exponentially over the past decade, from just 1 per cent in 2012 to 49 per cent last year.

The percentage of children waiting longer than 12 weeks is particularly egregious in a number of health boards: 48 per cent in NHS Forth Valley, 49 per cent in Highland, and an unfathomable, unforgivable 69 per cent in Lothian.

Dr Mairi Stark of the RCPCH said: ‘Lengthy waits are unacceptable for any patient, but for children and young people the waits can be catastrophic, as many treatments need to be given by a specific age or developmental stage.

‘It is not the same as for adults: if you miss the right window to treat a child or wait too long the consequences can be irreversible.’

Intervention

And that is the crux of the matter. There are any number of conditions where early intervention is vital and delays can have long-lasting health impacts. A child whose type 1 diabetes isn’t diagnosed soon enough could suffer serious harms from the failure of their pancreas to generate sufficient insulin. Children in this situation simply can’t wait.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar raised the case of Cody at First Minister’s Questions last week. Cody is a three-year-old boy diagnosed with a tonsillitis that blocks 75 per cent of his airway. This affects his ability to eat, drink and even breathe. His breathing regularly stops while he is sleeping.

His mother, Amy, has to lie next to him every night, awake and prepared to rouse him should air stop getting through to his lungs.

After finally seeing a specialist, she was told Cody would have to wait three years for an urgent referral to treatment on the NHS. An urgent referral. Cody cannot wait that long. Amy cannot wait that long. So she has borrowed £5,000 from her family to go private.

Cody’s story will disgust and terrify most parents in equal measure. I am not a parent and yet I could feel my blood pressure soaring as I listened to Sarwar narrate the details. It is a story worth remembering next time the First Minister boasts that things are so much better in Scotland’s NHS than south of the Border. A three-year-old, who stops breathing in his sleep, and the best ‘urgent’ care he can hope for is three years away. Unless, that is, his mother can produce thousands of pounds.

That is not merely disgraceful. In an advanced Western country, in the 21st century, it is downright uncivilised.

There are thousands of Codys in Scotland. Children who need healthcare and need it now. Many will come from families who simply cannot afford the fees commanded by private sector doctors.

Almost as lamentable as the long waits is the neglect. Even when the NHS can’t provide swift diagnosis and appropriate treatment, it should at least be keeping patients informed. The RCPCH study tells us that this is not happening as consistently as it should be.

One young person quoted in the report said: ‘Tell us what’s happening so we don’t imagine all sorts, this can make it worse.’

It’s a sentiment echoed by a parent who told the researchers: ‘As a parent, all you want is peace of mind. Communication is really important, otherwise people just feel lost.

‘Lack of communication makes us feel like we’ve been missed.’

The RCPCH recommends a review of the child health workforce and its funding, better collection and use of patient data, and stepped-up funding and access to primary and community-based healthcare for children.

Yet confronted with the report’s findings at First Minister’s Questions, Humza Yousaf was a profile in complacency, telling the chamber ‘there have been improvements’ and ‘we are moving in the right direction’, before pinning the blame on the UK Government for not giving Holyrood enough money.

(In 2023-24, the UK Government gave Holyrood a £29.4billion block grant and a further £1.4billion in non-Barnett money. Sixty pence of every pound in the Scottish Government’s coffers last year was put there by the Treasury.)

It may be galling to hear Yousaf try to parlay something like children’s health into another bash-Westminster political rammy, but it should surprise no one. This government has been neglecting young people’s wellbeing for years in the area of mental health.

The Scottish Government’s own target says 90 per cent of patients referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services should be seen within 18 weeks. For children in desperate need of help –and for their anxious parents – 18 weeks already feels like an eternity.

Yet Scotland’s NHS is falling short of that target today and was falling short of it pre-pandemic, too.

In January, the Scottish Liberal Democrats revealed the scale of this scandal in figures acquired under freedom of information laws. They showed the child mental health target had been breached to the tune of four million waiting days, 1.4million of them last year alone.

Excuses

Those numbers are damning – and damnable. They represent real people, children and their families, already going through the distress of mental ill-health but made to suffer for longer because the Scottish Government has consistently failed to keep its promises and meet its targets.

None of the usual excuses wash. Not money: health and social care got £19billion this financial year. Not the pandemic: these problems existed long before Covid-19.

The problem lies in politics. For 17 years the SNP has been in total and exclusive control of Scotland’s NHS. Every policy, every funding allocation, every recruitment decision – the Nationalists have called all the shots.

Behold the fruits of their endeavours. If this government had a shred of decency, it would resign in shame.

Almost two decades of failure will not be undone quickly. It will take time and the setting of new priorities. Most of all, it will take a government brave enough to admit to the public that the NHS in its current form is unsustainable.

That does not mean abandoning the principle of universal healthcare but it does mean confronting the need for reform, including to funding and delivery models. The ultimate goal must be good quality, timely healthcare for all.

This current government cannot be the one to deliver that reform. I say that not merely as a critic of SNP politics or Scottish Government policy, but as an ordinary member of the public who, like everyone else, can see the writing on the wall.

This government has failed. Sooner or later, it must go. Only a new broom can sweep away this awful mess.