Why are Scottish party leaders arguing about the NHS?

Despite avoiding the disruption of strikes, the latest data showed NHS waiting lists in Scotland had reached a record size at the end of March, with 690,000 waits for planned outpatient or inpatient care.

And in contrast to England, Scotland has failed to fulfil a 2022 pledge to eliminate the longest waits. More than 80,000 procedures or appointments had a waiting time of over 12 months, and 8,000 over two years.

But Mark Dayan from the Nuffield Trust says there may be good reasons for this, and that Scotland’s waiting times are not the worst in the UK. In fact, he says the NHS in Scotland and England are broadly similar when it comes to average waits for elective care.

He said: “[It] suggests Scotland’s NHS isn’t targeting the longest waiters as aggressively, which may be justifiable as long as it means that the most clinically needy are at the front of the line.

“In both Scotland and England, roughly two thirds of patients are reaching the end of their wait for care within the 18 week benchmark. Northern Ireland’s waiting times, despite some recent improvement, remain by far the longest in the UK. The average person waits nearly a year just for an outpatient appointment, whereas in England and Scotland that would be about three months.”