Press Release
15th April 2004

McNeil Condemns “Failing” Health Committee
The Scottish Parliament’s Health Committee is failing in its duty to hold the Health Minister and powerful vested interests to account, according to one of its own members.

In a letter to Committee Convener, Christine Grahame, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Duncan McNeil, says that by pushing the major issues facing the NHS aside, the Committee is “allowing the Health Minister and professional interests within the NHS to escape effective scrutiny.”

Mr McNeil is angry that, since securing the agreement of his Committee colleagues to launch a major inquiry into NHS workforce planning over five months ago, no progress has been made.

“Across Scotland, from Inverclyde, to Ayrshire, to the Highlands, to Glasgow, to Perth and beyond, staffing pressures are collapsing – or being used as an excuse to collapse – maternity and paediatric services,” he said today.  “Communities are left outraged, MSPs frustrated and patients short-changed. 

“Indeed, it was our experience in Inverclyde which led me to leave my job as Chief Whip last summer and become a member of the Health Committee.  I thought we would be taking these challenges head-on, not tinkering round the edges.

“I regularly meet with local health board officials, managers, clinicians and a host of other professionals to discuss developments on the ground.  But there is a limit to what this can achieve if the nationwide, systemic problems regarding how the NHS is run are not tackled.”

“I defy any elected representative to argue that there is a more fundamental challenge facing today’s NHS.  It is beyond me how a major inquiry into such a central issue could be sidelined.”

In his letter to Ms Grahame, Mr McNeil says that Committee members’ constituents will find the lack of progress “all the more difficult to understand when they reflect on the fact that the Committee has found time to consider such weighty matters as food supplements; countless petitions on very narrow issues; and a veritable rainforest of subordinate legislation encompassing everything from Iranian pistachios to Egyptian peanuts.”  

The letter continues:

“One of the real strengths of the Scottish Parliament is the power we invest in our cross-party Committee system.  Their ability – and indeed duty – to hold the Executive to account has made a genuine contribution to the democratic process.  Sadly, I am bound to put on record my view that the Health Committee is currently failing in this duty and is allowing the Health Minister and professional interests within the NHS to escape effective scrutiny on this most crucial of topics.

“The longer we allow ourselves to be diverted by isolated issues, the longer we neglect the bigger picture and the longer this failure continues.”

In its work programme, published on 12^th November 2003, the Health Committee says it will conduct an inquiry, the remit of which will be to “review workforce planning for all professions within the NHS in Scotland and how this is being developed to meet the needs and demands of patients.”

In other words, the inquiry would:

• Cover the roles and responsibilities for workforce planning;
• Identify pressures affecting the workforce and how they impact on service delivery e.g. Specialisation of staff skills and the European Working Time Directive;
• Examine what the Executive is doing to address those pressures identified;
• Identify areas with difficulties in recruitment and retention, and identify best practice;
• Examine what the Executive is doing to develop the workforce in areas identified as experiencing recruitment and retention difficulties;
• Examine what is being done to identify longer term influences on health service provision and demand, and how this relates to workforce development; and

• Identify barriers to training and education.

ENDS

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