Report to the People
26th April 2004
Health Inquiry Rolling at Last
As
you might expect, most real political work is done, not through trading insults
in a debating chamber or the columns of the press, but through quiet,
constructive diplomacy.
Sometimes,
however, when all else fails, sparking a bit of controversy is the only option
you have left.
So
it was with the excessive delay to the Health Committee’s inquiry into
workforce planning in the NHS. As
you may have read in your Telegraph last
week, I was becoming increasingly exasperated with the lack urgency being shown
in getting it up and running – some five months had passed since I secured the
agreement of committee colleagues
that such an investigation was needed, but no progress had been made.
There
is, as we in Inverclyde know only too well, no bigger issue facing the NHS today
than how staff are recruited, trained and retained. But, while a major investigation into the whole issue
languished on the back burner, staffing pressures were collapsing – or being
used as an excuse to collapse – maternity and paediatric services across
Scotland. Indeed, only last week,
another community was left outraged after Glasgow health bosses endorsed plans
to close the Queen Mother's maternity unit.
I
was therefore left with no option but to make my anger and frustration public.
Now,
I appreciate that this is a blunt instrument.
And it’s true that it irked a few people who jumped to the (wrong)
conclusion that I was complaining that the committee had never done anything of
worth. (In fact, it has carried out
a lot of important work, including scrutinising major pieces of reforming
legislation.)
Still,
blunt instrument or not, at Tuesday’s committee meeting things – purely
coincidentally, I am sure – began to move.
The
committee agreed to send small cross-party groups of members to different areas
of Scotland to gather information from the public and those who work in the
health service on how staffing issues are affecting them.
These facts, figures and insights will then be brought together and used
to help us agree what witnesses we need to call, what specific arrangements we
need to scrutinise and what questions we need answered.
Not a small job, but one which I understand we will now have plenty of
committee time to do properly.
Now
that the ball is finally rolling, the challenge is to keep up the momentum.
I hope, with my committee colleagues now fully aware of the importance of
taking action, that this will prove a much easier task – and one I don’t
have to lose my temper to get done.
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