Rebuild the NHS

By an NHS worker and GMB rep

The Covid pandemic has exposed the decades-long neglect that the NHS in Scotland has suffered.

The service was unprepared for Covid and threats to frontline services continue. Several hospitals, including Raigmore in Inverness and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, were put into ‘Code Black’ restrictions over the summer, meaning routine non urgent procedures were cancelled.

Health boards blamed this on staff self-isolating and taking annual leave (how dare they!) but in truth hospitals were routinely short-staffed and wards backfilled with more expensive, and in some cases underqualified, agency staff even before the pandemic.

In response to the Scottish government’s NHS recovery plan, published on 25 August 2021, RCN, the nursing union said: “Members are telling us daily that staff shortages are impacting on patient care and their wellbeing. Action on staffing levels is urgently needed to ensure patient safety across our NHS.

“To date the Scottish Government’s workforce planning has been woefully poor and resulted in us entering the pandemic with thousands of nursing vacancies…

“As a safety critical profession, nursing has been undervalued and under-resourced for too long. The pandemic has compounded years of working under the pressure of staff shortages and with pay that has failed to keep pace with the cost of living.”

It is not just frontline nursing staff who are feeling the pressure, however.
As the service opens further for non-Covid patients, the Covid-related workload in other areas is actually increasing.

In laboratories for example, the number of patient screens is increasing because all patients attending for procedures or hospital stays are tested for Covid.

breaking point

In terms of staffing levels, the system is at breaking point. If one staff member is off, even on planned leave, the workload on their colleagues becomes unbearable, leading to mistakes. Many workers feel pressured to miss breaks or work when they should call in sick, risking the welfare of their colleagues.

The huge backlog of cases and massively expanded waiting lists because of Covid is only going to exacerbate staffing problems. In the NHS recovery plan, mentioned above, the government states that:

“The impact of addressing the Covid-19 pandemic meant many health and care services had to be suspended or reduced in scope and scale. This affected almost all aspects of NHS care.”

covid

It is true that the scale of the challenge from Covid was unprecedented in modern times, but it is disingenuous to suggest that the level of threat it posed to NHS services was unavoidable.

Exercise Cygnus and Exercise Alice, both designed to stress test the preparedness of health services for new emerging viruses, highlighted that the UK was seriously deficient should a pandemic strike.

And the ideologically driven austerity agenda of the preceding decade meant that stocks of essential items, like PPE, were run down to save costs, with entirely predictable consequences when the worst happened.

In the Scottish government’s recovery plan it sets out how they intend to increase NHS capacity by at least 10% as quickly as is possible to address the backlog in care.

It also sets out the £1 billion of targeted investment designed to deliver improvements through this five-year term of the Scottish parliament. Given the ineptitude of the government in the running of the service prior to and during the pandemic, it is yet to be seen if this will be delivered.

NHS pay

But if the derisory pay deal offered to workers of 4%, representing a double digit pay cuts since 2010, is indicative of their strategy it is likely that they will be found wanting.

Grass roots campaigners, belatedly followed by some union leaders, put forward realistic pay demands of 15% which could have halted the exodus of staff and spiralling low morale in the workforce, 50% of whom have contemplated leaving in the last year because of Covid.

This fight was defeated as much by the cowardly leadership of unions like Unison as by the weaselly tactics of the SNP ministers, who tabled their 4% insult just hours before the parliamentary recess.

But the initial consultative ballots, particularly by RCN and GMB, demonstrated that workers were prepared to fight for fair pay. Unions and grassroots campaigners should begin building for the pay campaign for next year.

Unions must also lead the fight for to rebuild a fully funded NHS in Scotland – which the money promised by the government in its recovery plan will fail to deliver.

WE FIGHT FOR