STOP THE DOWNGRADE Campaign


Recent events may lead you to believe that NHS Lothian has had a run of bad luck. The winter vomiting virus shutting several wards in many hospitals, brain-damaged babies, bed-blocking at a record high at the Royal Infirmary, the Sick Kids… Add to this the fact that the Royal Infirmary (RIE) now fails on a regular basis to admit its own patients promptly. Sometimes over 50 patients a day are left languishing in A& E for more than 4 hours.

You’ve heard about the doctors at St John’s so driven to despair that they had to write to the newspapers. You know about the nurses at the Western General who felt they had to speak out anonymously about inadequate staffing levels.

You won’t know about the Health Board’s inability to manage its budget and how it is now pleading with government to rescue them from the burden of the RIE built at ruinous expense using the discredited private finance initiative (PFI).

This is not a Health Board responding to a crisis. It is a crisis masquerading as a Health Board!
The problems that now occur every day across Lothian are the direct result of ill-informed and misguided policies put into effect by people who wouldn’t listen to public opinion or to common sense. We argued when emergency surgery and trauma orthopaedics were removed from St John’s that the Royal Infirmary was too small to cope with the volume of work. We were ignored.

Now it is obvious to everyone that the Royal Infirmary cannot cope. It cannot cope almost every day of the week. So now the Health Board wants to increase its beds by 50. This is the thin end of the wedge. The RIE will need lots more. People in Scotland are ageing, living longer and suffering from illnesses for which they have to be admitted to hospital. How will the Board pay for these extra RIE beds which must be created using PFI? The Board wants to sell off public assets at the height of the recession!  

This is like a homeowner who wants an extra bedroom selling his house at a knockdown price and then renting it again for the rest of his life! This is how NHS Lothian thinks. The Deaconess Hospital looks set to be sold, and the Board is lining up the Royal Victoria, the Royal Edinburgh and the Astley Ainslie Hospitals for disposal. Millions of pounds of valuable public assets are going to be sold off to pay for the incompetence of the Board that was too proud to listen. They insisted on centralising services to a Royal Infirmary which they built too small. Who is responsible for this?

You wouldn’t believe it. Mr Egan, a trade union man, a Unison man, is the Deputy Chair of the Health Board. But Unison has pledged not to sell public assets. Unison is opposed to PFI. Yet they tolerate Mr Egan’s actions. It appears he is doing this in the name of the NHS workforce whom he represents on the Board!
Dr Swainson, a medical man, pledged to help and heal the sick. Yet the Board of which he is a member is responsible for forcing elderly people from West Lothian to travel at the crack of dawn into the Royal Infirmary so that they can be prepared for surgical procedures they used to get at St John’s, and still could. This same doctor is the Medical Director of a Board which sends sick, vulnerable East Lothian folk miles away from their homes when they fall ill. Dr Swainson appears to have forgotten one of the founding principles of the NHS, which pledged local access to emergency medical care. Perhaps he has also forgotten that people recover from illness more quickly when they are close to their homes, their families and their friends. Does Dr Swainson’s £230 000 annual salary help him to close his eyes and ears to the distress which is being caused to people who cannot defend themselves?

Even Mr McCaffery, the Chief Executive of the Royal Infirmary, seems to be lacking in compassion for the people the RIE turns away from its doors. You would think that a man who knows about chronic illness would have some sympathy with the sick. Perhaps his salary of £165 000 a year blinds him to other people’s suffering.

The SNP doesn’t emerge with any credit either. Councillor Johnston is the leader of West Lothian Council. He knows the facts, yet does nothing. Ms Constance and Mrs Hyslop are the two local SNP MSPs. When did you last hear them utter one word about the progressive decline in St John’s?

If you want to see a failing hospital then take a trip down the drive at St John’s. The potholes are big enough to swallow elephants! The Board doesn’t care. Some of the most basic equipment is lacking. An MRI scanner! The only hospital in Lothian that doesn’t have one is St John’s. Edinburgh hospitals have several. The Board doesn’t care. The Board wants to try to fool you with stories about “investment” in St John’s. The truth is that they are building more and more day case facilities. They want St John’s to be a hospital that turns off its lights at night!

The reality of government has forced even decent people to agree to the nonsense being proposed by NHS Lothian. The Cabinet Secretary for Health, Ms Sturgeon, made it clear that Health Boards would not be allowed to sell their assets to fund day to day clinical care. Yet NHS Lothian has already sold over £100 million of public assets and they are in open discussion with Ms Sturgeon’s government about selling off even more. Why is Ms Sturgeon going along with this in defiance of her socialist principles and her own statements? How does she expect NHS Lothian to raise funds in the future once it has sold off all its assets and is left with just a collection of leased buildings like the RIE? This is an example of short-term thinking which will impoverish the public for generations once all the decision makers have departed into gold-plated retirement.

The SDC is clear that public assets should be kept in public hands. A tiny minority of individuals should not be allowed any longer to ruin health provision for hundreds of thousands of people. The SDC asks the SNP at a local and national level to stop any plans to sell NHS Lothian assets. Instead, there should be more effective use of existing facilities. Fundamental to this process should be an acceptance that for the vast majority of people care can and should be provided locally. Except in a few cases, most West Lothian patients should be treated at St John’s. The practice of sending elderly West Lothian people with simple fractures to the RIE should stop. These patients sit in the RIE for days waiting on a space in theatre. Meanwhile, the overwhelmed RIE has to send non-emergency orthopaedic patients to the Murrayfield Hospital and to the Golden Jubilee in Clydebank. This means that NHS Lothian is paying the private sector to do NHS work. Not surprisingly, the orthopaedic surgeons who argued for their speciality to be centralised to the RIE are loving it since they make a fortune in extra fees for working at these other hospitals. Does any of this represent good value for public money at a time when so many people are facing redundancy, short-time working and tax increases?

The SDC asks that St John’s should be revitalised as an acute, emergency hospital serving a local West Lothian population that is one of the fastest growing in Scotland. It is not good enough to take away vital surgical services on a premise which has been shown to be false and which has led to the near bankruptcy of the Health Board such that they have to keep selling off their buildings to make ends meet. It is not good enough to try and fool the West Lothian public that their local hospital is safe because there is going to be a day surgery centre. No major general hospital in Scotland has been stripped of emergency surgery. St John’s should not be the exception.

The SDC asks the politicians of West Lothian – our elected representatives – to step up to the plate. They have a responsibility here and now to protect their local hospital and ensure that it survives as a fit and vibrant institution that they can bequeath with pride to the next generation. St John’s is not such a hospital at present. This means that they have to challenge Ms Sturgeon to deliver on her promises. No sale of public assets. Keep healthcare local. Now is the time for Messrs Johnston, Constance and Hyslop to give meaning to these fine statements.

The SDC intends to speak for ordinary people who are frightened at what they see happening to St John's and who are appalled at the incompetence, greed and arrogance of senior Health Board members who have created the current crisis in the NHS in Lothian.

The next Public meeting will be held on WEDNESDAY 10th March 2010 at 7.30pm in the Kaim Park, Bathgate.