Robison cannot say if five more national treatment centres will be delivered

Scotland’s Finance Secretary has refused to say whether five more national treatment centres will be delivered, after the projects were shelved.

The facilities were proposed by the Scottish Government in a bid to cut waiting times and increase efficiency, but funding issues led to the pausing of five of them in 2024.

Alongside Tuesday’s Budget, the Government published its infrastructure pipeline, which said the need for the centres would be re-assessed depending on the national picture.

No timescale was set for an announcement on what projects would go ahead and when they would be online.

Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie accused ministers of “completely ditching” the plans.

But speaking to journalists after the Budget was announced, Finance Secretary Shona Robison suggested some of the facilities could be opened in areas of existing hospitals, with health boards coming up with a separate national infrastructure plan, which will be “more strategic” than existing proposals.

Asked if she could guarantee that five more treatment centres will go ahead, Ms Robison refused to say so.

“That work is the work that… is going on about what should be delivered where, because it’s making sense of that,” she said.

“Those centres were essentially boards coming forward and saying ‘we want this here’.

“What (Health and Social Care Secretary) Neil Gray is doing is taking a national look at what is going to be provided where, to make sense of it, so that what is provided is not just what a board happened to come forward with, but where they’re actually needed.”

He is currently working with NHS boards, she said, to develop a national infrastructure plan.

“So, instead of each board essentially doing its own thing, that’s going to be done on a more national basis around where are the investments and where are they going to be made,” she said.

She added: “Work is already going on to, if you like, ring-fence elective care within hospital systems that is then not interrupted by any admissions coming in.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean new buildings, it’s about delivering services in a different way.

“So we’re looking across Scotland, where we can establish those National Treatment Centres that are essentially based on the model of the Golden Jubilee (Hospital in Clydebank), but they might not necessarily be new buildings.”

Asked if the plan was now to include a mix of potential new builds and hiving off existing areas within hospitals, the Finance Secretary said there could be some “re-purposing existing facilities in order to do things more quickly”.

Ms Baillie said: “The National Treatment Centre programme has been beset by delays from day one, yet the SNP have been more focused on trying to spin their way out of the situation rather than taking any responsibility.

“After years of dither and delay, it is deeply regrettable that SNP ministers now appear to have completely ditched plans to build the NTCs that remain outstanding.

“More than £36 million has already been spent on NTCs that have not been delivered, and this now looks like even more money down the drain, hitting taxpayers in the pocket.

“This is just further evidence of an SNP government that opts to govern by press release and then fails to deliver, and it is patients who are left to bear the brunt.