Year-long treatment waits will be gone in ‘short number of months’ – Swinney

Year-long waits in the health service will be gone in a “short number of months”, First Minister John Swinney has said.

The Scottish Government pledged it would eliminate waits of 52 weeks or more by March – but a report last week said that goal would not be hit.

Figures released on Tuesday confirmed the pledge had been missed, with 44,000 waits of a year or more still ongoing.

Speaking to the Press Association in Stirling, the First Minister gave an assurance the number would drop to zero in the coming months.

“I think it’s a matter of a short number of months before we get those numbers sorted out and to address the issue,” he said.

“But what I think we should be looking at today is that we’ve got nine months of continuous reductions in long waits for outpatient and inpatient treatment – that’s thousands and thousands of people receiving the healthcare treatment they require and more and more people getting treatment within the 12-week period.

“We can see the progress that’s been made to ensure that people are getting access to health services that they require – that’s been delivered by an SNP Government and I want a re-elected SNP Government to give just as much focus to reducing these waits as we have done so far on delivering that success.”

Scottish Tory health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane accused the SNP of “two decades of chronic incompetence”, adding: “John Swinney can try to spin the figures all he likes before the election, but the reality is over 650,000 Scots are still stuck on an NHS waiting list.

“He promised to end year-long waits in the NHS by the end of this month, but tens of thousands of Scots are still suffering these outrageous delays on his watch.

“We know that these intolerable waits, which were virtually eradicated by the previous UK Conservative government, have a devastating impact on patients’ physical and mental health.

“The SNP can’t be trusted with our NHS, and we know if they win a majority in May their focus will be solely on independence.”