Robert Brown attacks SNP plans for Government

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 10th Sep 2007

Glasgow Liberal Democrat MSP Robert Brown has attacked SNP plans for government as "the thinnest and most inconsequential legislative programme the Parliament has seen", and declared it "unworthy of Scotland's aspirations" and full of "substantial practical holes."

Speaking in Parliament during the debate on the SNP Government's programme, Mr. Brown - the Liberal Democrat group Business Manager - condemned the SNP administration for creating a lack of direction in the NHS, leaving sick and elderly patients unsure about the future of the NHS services available to them.

The Kerr report was produced under the previous Executive and provided a framework for building a better health service fit for the future. There are now concerns that the SNP have dropped the vision set out by the Kerr report, with little or nothing in its place.

Mr. Brown said:

"The National Health Service is by far the most challenging of our great public services, and the previous Executive made considerable progress on putting in resources, shaping and modernising services, and concentrating on key priorities such as long-term conditions.

"But the proposed Patient Services Bill, on which we have yet to see any detail, looks like a recipe for political meddling, short termism and lack of direction in the Health service. Sick and elderly patients in Scotland should not require to go to law to access their rights to proper treatment.

"After the Kerr report, there was consensus about the future of the health service but, in essence, it has been dumped. Clinicians throughout the country no longer know where the NHS is going.

"The future and reform of the NHS is of vital importance to Scotland. The SNP plans for Government all but ignore the key problems with the NHS today, and I am afraid that the sick, elderly and vulnerable will be the ones to suffer".

Mr. Brown also criticised the decision to spend £100,000 on changing signs on public buildings throughout Scotland, in order to re-brand the Scottish Executive as the Scottish Government, saying that they could not even ensure proper accessibility on the Scottish Government website which only offered "limited functionality."

Mr. Brown then went on to say that the SNP were "not a Government, but a campaign, the sole object of which is to secure an independent Scotland."