Scottish Conservatives

29 Mar 2017

The Scottish Conservatives have heavily criticised the SNP after the economy secretary announced that the new Queensferry Crossing will now not be completed until late summer at the earliest.

It represents another delay in the Scottish Government’s timetable, that originally estimated that the bridge would be open last December.

The SNP had repeatedly pledged that the bridge would be completed on time, but this is already the second delay to the completion date that has been announced.

It also comes after the Forth Road Bridge was shut twice over the past few months, causing huge delays to the thousands of commuters who use it every day.

Questions are now being asked about when Keith Brown knew of the delay, with many of those involved in the project having predicted further delays in recent weeks.

Scottish Conservative transport & infrastructure spokesman Liam Kerr said:

“This delay will come as a huge blow to the many commuters who travel across the Forth every single day.

“They have already had to deal with massive disruption over the past two months due to closures on the current Forth Road Bridge, and now we learn that the Queensferry Crossing is months behind schedule.

“The SNP assured us that this project would be delivered on time, but these promises have proven to be worthless as, once again, we see the completion date slipping.

“It is simply unacceptable, and the economy secretary needs to explain why this delay has occurred and what the Scottish Government are going to do to ensure the new timescale is kept to.

“There are also underlying questions about how long Keith Brown has known about this issues. Many contractors had been hinting at delays in the previous few weeks, so if they knew it was going to be delayed, why didn’t the minister?

“It points to someone who is either hopelessly out of touch with this project, or someone who was waiting for a busy news day in order to bury bad news.”

read more

28 Mar 2017

The SNP has been accused of “brushing aside” shocking health targets.

The criticism has been sparked following the announcement that for the fourth year in a row Scotland’s NHS has missed the cancer waiting timescale target.

The current target is for 95 per cent of urgently referred cancer patients to begin treatment within 62 days.

However, in the last quarter only 87.5 per cent were seen within the target timescale.

The worst performing health board was NHS Western Isles, in which only 66.7 per cent of patients were seen within the 62 days.

With only five of the 14 regional health boards across Scotland hitting the target, the Scottish Conservatives are calling for the SNP to take urgent action to ensure cancer patients are being seen within the target time.

Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary Donald Cameron said:

“People are quite right to question why targets have been missed for the fourth consecutive year.

“The SNP should be doing everything it can to ensure more patients are being seen within the target timescale.

“Instead they’ve let standards slide and as a result thousands of patients across Scotland are not receiving the treatment that they need when they need it.

“It’s inexcusable for the SNP to just continually brush these missed targets aside, especially when it’s well known that receiving swift treatment for cancer can often make all the difference in improving outcomes for these patients.

“The SNP has badly let down patients and it is time they got back to the day job.”

---

Cancer waiting times NHS Scotland:

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Waiting-Times/Publications/2017-03-28/2017-03-28-CWT-Summary.pdf

read more