Scotland’s health secretary has dismissed calls for a full-scale review of the country’s NHS, despite Labour highlighting the level of sick days taken in Tayside and Fife.
Alex Neil admitted the health service was facing both “problems” and “challenges” but claimed his shadow, Neil Findlay, had failed to put forward any evidence to back up claims the NHS was “under pressure like never before”.
Mr Findlay highlighted the time NHS staff had taken off for stress-related illness last year, saying 24.5% of all sick days in 2012/13 at NHS Tayside were a result of stress-related conditions and 16% of sickness absence in NHS Fife was down to the same cause.
The Labour politician said: “The reality is that the NHS in Scotland, the staff who work in it, are under pressure like never before.”
He highlighted “budget pressures” with “fewer staff being asked to do more for less” as some of the problems facing the NHS, along with “bed blocking, waiting times increasing” and a “skeleton weekend service” in hospitals.
Mr Neil hit back by claiming a call for a review was “the cry of a man and a party with no policy, no plans, no ideas and absolutely no vision.”
He said: “The reality is the national health and social care system in Scotland today does clearly have pressures but it isn’t the basket case outlined by Mr Findlay, far from it.
“To call for a review is absolutely absurd.”