Highlands and Islands MSP Donald Cameron is urging the Scottish Government to prioritise the recruitment of extra nurses to help the NHS recover from the impact of the COVID pandemic.
The Scottish Conservative MSP said: “The SNP Government has, so far, diverted £211m into its Test and Protect scheme for 2021/22 which could, frankly, be better spent on nurse recruitment to help tackle bottlenecks in the NHS.
“We need to prioritise the NHS frontline urgently, and research by the Scottish Conservatives indicates that by re-allocating the Test and Protect spend we could employ 8,000 extra nurses across Scotland. That would be the equivalent of an extra 500 nurses in Highland and more than 50 in the Western Isles.
“I believe that would be a much better way of tackling the mounting challenge facing the NHS.
“Test and Protect had some value early in the pandemic, but it’s now become much less useful and we need to move on.”