THE Labour Party in Scotland is being asked to clarify if it supports Wes Streeting's plan to introduce league tables for hospitals in England and whether it would seek to introduce a similar system in Scotland should they win the next Holyrood elections and form a government.

Part of the plan involves a new pay framework for chief executives to be published in April, which will "clamp down" on poor performance while rewarding success. Another aspect of the plan sees hospital trusts with good performance, or which raise themselves up the league table, being rewarded with extra money to buy equipment and repair or construct facilities.

The league tables will be based on metrics such as how long patients have to wait for A&E treatment, surgery and other care, the state of the trust’s finances and also how good its leadership is judged to be.

Streeting's plan has been widely criticised by healthcare professionals.

Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, warned that the plans could risk demoralising staff and make recruitment and retention of staff in poorly performing areas "even harder".

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He said there was a real danger of "short-term target chasing" which would mean less effort being put into solving the really serious problems in the NHS. Instead of putting resources and effort into genuine overall improvement, healthcare managers will be strongly incentivised to meet the specific targets which lead to an improvement in league table position which do not necessarily bring about a better outcome for patients.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS trusts, said health services were already subject to a lot of oversight and regulation - and the prospect of "more league tables" would concern health leaders.

He said: "NHS staff are doing their very best for patients, under very challenging circumstances, and we do not want them feeling like they are being named and shamed. League tables in themselves do not lead to improvement."

The Scottish Greens have denounced Streeting's plans, with their health spokesperson Gillian Mackay (below) saying: "Trying to pit NHS hospitals against each other like some kind of game is appalling. These are vital healthcare services, not the Premier League.

"Brexit to increased waiting times after COVID, it's clear that something needs to change, but turning our NHS into a competition is obviously not the answer.

“Scottish Labour must come clean and tell us if they support this dangerous policy, do they really want to turn Scotland’s health service into a game?

“There is a real danger that by creating league tables like this we will further entrench health inequalities and make it harder for our NHS to recruit and retain staff."

The National has approached the Labour Party in Scotland for clarification about its plans for the NHS in Scotland, and whether it supports Streeting's plans for NHS England.

Labour in Scotland has not responded, so we can probably take that as a yes. Aided and abetted by the Scottish media, Anas Sarwar typically keeps his head down when his bosses in England introduce a controversial policy and only pops up when he can demand that the Scottish Government find extra funding to deal with whichever bee he has in his bunnet that week, although he never ever says where he thinks the money is going to come from.

The Scottish Health Secretary Neil Gray (below) has said that the Scottish Government has no plans to introduce Streeting's league tables into NHS Scotland. After being asked whether he could rule out such a policy being introduced in Scotland, Scottish Health Secretary Neil Gray said there were “no plans” to change the way health board performance is monitored.

(Image: Andrew Milligan)

He said: “We have the best performing core A&E departments in the UK and have done for the last eight years.

“We already have sufficient measures in place in Scotland to monitor and support health board performance – we have no plans to change this.

“Our NHS Scotland Support and Intervention framework guides our work with boards to identify and resolve issues as early and quickly as possible – with a focus on collaborative working.” Although were league tables to be introduced they would doubtless show that hospitals in Scotland out-perform their counterparts in England. Even so, Anas Sarwar will still pretend that the NHS in Scotland is uniquely bad and that the UK-wide crisis afflicting the NHS has nothing to do with issues affecting NHS Scotland.

At First Minister's Questions today, the First Minister John Swinney (below) attacked the Scottish Tories for their "rank hypocrisy" after he announced that plans for a Scottish care service have been put on hold until next year. These proposals – which were to centralise adult social care and social work in Scotland – have been delayed until next year amid criticism from councils and trade unions. The Scottish Greens also announced that they would not support the Bill, meaning that there were doubts about whether the National Care Service Bill would have sufficient support in Parliament to ultimately pass.

(Image: Image: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Scottish Tory Leader Russell Findlay demanded that the plans be scrapped entirely and "investment put directly into front-line social care where it is so desperately needed."

He went on to accuse SNP ministers as having a "reckless disregard for taxpayers' money" and continued: “It should not just be delayed. It should be binned. So why won't John Swinney put taxpayers' money into the front-line, where families will actually feel the benefit?"

A distinctly unimpressed John Swinney hit back saying: "...we have increased the pay for social care workers to make working in the social care sector more attractive."

“So that we can deliver more social care packages for vulnerable members in the community, so they can stay longer in their own homes. That's what we've done."

Of course, when we brought forward those proposals – they were voted against by the Conservatives,” he said.

“So, the Conservatives cannot come here and demand that I take action to improve the standards of the Social Care Service, which depend on the recruitment of social care employees and to boost the size of the social care workforce, and then not be prepared to vote for them.

“That is what is called rank hypocrisy, and it's typical of the Conservatives.”

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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