Scotland’s unpopular Deputy First Minster Nicola Sturgeon oversees 1000 Scots health jobs going as numbers plunge to 2005 levels, major PR disaster

Dear All

Health is a flagship SNP policy but there is something coming down the pipeline.

Cuts, cuts, cuts!

You will no doubt have heard a lot of talk about efficiency savings in health which means posts are not being filled deliberately, and re-jig of the services has seen less people employed than before.

The stark reality of the health service under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership is the number of nurses and midwives in the NHS are at its lowest for almost seven years.

The glory days of health as a flagship SNP policy have spectacularly crashed onto the rocks as official figures revealed yesterday.

At present there are 56,184 full-time nursing and midwifery staff across Scotland, the lowest number there has been since September 2005.

Health is now going backwards, independence is now going backwards and Nicola Sturgeon has the major input in both.

Is that just a co-incidence?

For the SNP Governemnt, it gets worse; the numbers show more than 2,000 less than September 2009.

Where did it all go wrong?

It all went wrong because SNP Ministers abandoned their portfolios, ran out of ideas and went chasing their independence dreams.

Cue music, the hills are alive with the sound of musik! As SNP Ministers think they are 'living the dream', they are going to find they are living a nightmare.

‘the hills are alive with the sound of musik!’

Although part of the reduction is offset by transfer as 100 nurses in the Highlands have become council employees as a result of plans to integrate health and social care in the area, the trend is worrying.

And more jobs losses are on the way as the NHS moves towards the target of cutting the number of senior managers by 25 per cent by 2015.

All the opposition politicians hit out at health secretary Nicola Sturgeon over the fall in the number of nurses and midwives, this is their time; previously it was hard to score political points against the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon.

But the goal is wide open and no one in the net, it’s a tap in.

Labour health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said:

“We cannot allow the number of nurses, midwives and hospital staff to continue to plummet while the demands on our NHS grow.”

The Conservatives’ deputy leader, Jackson Carlaw, said the health secretary had previously pledged there would be no cuts to frontline services as a result of efficiency sayings.

Carlaw, also the Tories’ health spokesman, said:

“Health spending in Scotland is protected, so there is no excuse for the Scottish Government to aimlessly swing the axe at the nursing and midwifery headcount.”

Ms Sturgeon said:

“The NHS has been set a demanding target by reducing senior management posts by 25 per cent, but this reflects policy on keeping a tight rein on the pay bill for the highest earners during these challenging economic times. These figures demonstrate excellent progress and our expectation is that this target will be met earlier than anticipated. This will contribute to more than £100 million a year in non-clinical savings, which will be reinvested in frontline services.”

At present the Scottish Government is playing keepy ups with the health budget but Ms. Sturgeon should realise that glycogen in muscle tissue eventually burns out, dehydration and the build up of lactic acid in the working muscles leads to total failure of the organism.

Much like their budget, there is going to be a crash because the second term of the Scottish Government was never about independence; it was about public sector reform.

Public sector reform!

And as we are seeing there is clearly no agenda or vision to fix that bunny.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University