John Swinney insists NHS has the 'resources and staff' to reduce waiting times for Scots

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The NHS in Scotland has got "the resources, the facilities and the staff" needed to reduce waiting times, John Swinney has insisted.

The First Minister said that record funding worth £21 billion would help clear backlogs after years of misery for patients.SNP ministers have faced growing criticism over their handling of the NHS as waiting lists currently stand at 863,535 - the equivalent to one in six Scots.

The Scottish Government will plough in an extra £2 billion for the health service next year under draft Budget plans announced last week.Swinney spoke about the extra investment while visiting a new surgical centre at the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank.

The hospital is taking patients from across Scotland in a bid to reduce waiting lists. The SNP leader said: “Obviously we are now in a position to allocate more capital expenditure to the National Health Service, so I want to see more progress undertaken and we will do that as quickly as we possibly can do. “But the crucial point I want to focus on is making sure we use all of the assets available to us today to reduce waiting times, to make the biggest impact we possibly can do, and I think we have increasingly got the resources, the facilities and the staff to enable us to do that.”Swinney hailed the surgical centre at the Golden Jubilee Hospital as being a “first-class, modern facility” which is a “fantastic addition to the capacity of the National Health Service”.