MSP warns against Labour’s NHS centralisation plans
Scottish Conservative MSP Jamie Halcro Johnston has slammed Labour plans to centralise NHS Boards which could see health services across the Highlands and Islands run from Dundee.
In a speech at the Labour conference in Glasgow on Friday, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar outlined proposals which, should Labour form the next government at Holyrood in 2026, would cut Scotland’s NHS boards down to three, with the prospect of Orkney, Shetland, Highland, Grampian, Western Isles and Tayside all being merged together.
Orcadian Mr Halcro Johnston, who is Convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Cross Party Group on Islands and his party’s deputy rural affairs spokesman, said local communities across his Highlands and Islands region would be worried about the prospect of already under-pressure local health services being run by managers hundreds of miles away.
Mr Halcro Johnston said: “Much like the current SNP government, Labour has demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of our rural and island communities.
“Their plans to cut our health boards and centralise decision-making could mean choices about local health delivery in the Northern Isles, on Skye or in other parts of the Highlands would be made by NHS managers hundreds of miles away down in Dundee.
“This would be completely unacceptable to people across my region who already feel health services are being taken away from their local communities, with rural and island services sacrificed in favour of those in the cities.
“I know the pressures on our NHS and the hard-working staff who, day in day out, keep things running and patients looked after. But those pressures won’t be improved by moving responsibility for our health services even further away from those who rely on them.
“Our local NHS services are already stretched thin, but Labour want to stretch it even further. They simply don’t understand our rural and island communities.
“I want to see local people across my region having more say – not less - in the decisions which impact them and their families. And that means improving local health services, not accelerating the current creep of centralisation”.
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