I WRITE to respond to a number of points that have been raised in your letters page recently.
First, an anonymous correspondent suggested that I should not have resigned from the board of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde [over cuts to the GP out-of-hours service].
Unfortunately, for a councillor who wishes to continue to effectively represent their constituents when they disagree with a decision, that is the only option open to them.
This is because of a provision for collective responsibility that the Scottish Government insisted on adding to the Code of Conduct for public boards in 2022. The provision reads as follows: “I will respect the principle of collective decision-making and corporate responsibility. This means that once the Board has made a decision, I will support that decision, even if I did not agree with it or vote for it.”
This clause was added to the code of conduct, in my opinion, to gag members who are councillors. Given this, the only option open to me after the board made this decision was to resign, as my conscience would not allow me to publicly defend this decision.
The correspondent also suggests that more persuasion was required.
Over the four years that this campaign has been running, 6000 people signed a petition against it. We argued – and won – a review by Health Improvement Scotland which gave local people a voice. And we took the decision to the highest authority in the health board. Unfortunately, our local MP appears to have made no representations until the last minute and our MSP said in January that he accepted the changes. Had we had more support from them, perhaps the outcome would have been different.
The other problem is that the board is entirely stacked against local voices. There are seven councillors from across the health board but over 20 non-executive and executive members appointed by the Scottish Government.
In the vote that took place on the proposal myself, plus three Labour councillor colleagues voted against. We were joined by one non-executive member who had personal experience of out of hours services in Inverclyde.
Unfortunately, neither of the SNP councillors on the board voted against – one of them did not attend the meeting and the other left the meeting before the vote was taken. I will leave readers to draw their own conclusions from this.
Second, Stuart McMillan wrote to the Telegraph to dispute that the cuts to GP out-of-hours services were due to a lack of funding from his government or workforce pressures.
Mr McMillan seems not to have read the Health Board’s Primary Care Strategy which lays out these pressures in detail. In a section titled “Funding” on page 22 of the document, the Board notes that there have been real terms cuts in national funding. It goes on to say that “current funding levels are insufficient” and “as a result, our plans need to be restricted to what is deliverable with the available finance.” On page 23 it notes specifically that out of hours is one of the areas that has suffered from a “lack of investment”. It couldn’t be clearer than that.
People will rightly ask what Labour would do differently. If Labour forms the UK Government this year, we will use the money raised from cracking down on tax dodgers to provide funding for 160,000 new NHS appointments in Scotland. This would be a much-needed cash injection for the Scottish NHS. If we form the next Scottish Government, we are also committed to reducing the existing fourteen health boards to three and to redirect money from management to the NHS frontline, as well as increasing local control of NHS services.
Finally, Mr McMillan also disputes that he and his SNP MP colleague did not fight hard enough for jobs at EE. On the day that the job losses were announced, Mr McMillan said: “One thing that is clear is that the site will be closing. There will be no change of direction and no amount of wishful thinking will alter this” and Mr Cowan said “I am convinced there is no chance of EE keeping any kind of presence in Inverclyde.”
In years gone by when jobs or services in Inverclyde have been at risk, local MPs and MSPs have mounted campaigns to keep them – some successful, some unsuccessful – but by giving in on day one the message was sent that our parliamentary representatives were not willing to fight for these jobs.
After seventeen years of the SNP in Government and fourteen years of the Tories, we can’t go on like this. People will make their own judgements later this year about who is best placed to represent Inverclyde in the UK Parliament. As the Labour candidate in that election, I will continue to make my case door by door and street by street that our community can’t afford the status quo and change is desperately needed.
Martin McCluskey
Labour Candidate for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West
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