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The New Statesman

Hi, I'm Anouche, and on today's episode of the New Statesman podcast,

we're looking into the state of the NHS, strikes, and how they're impacting the governments and opposition parties of Scotland and Wales.

So let's begin in Scotland. I'm really pleased to be joined down the line by Chris Deer and our Scotland editor, who we haven't had on the pod for a while, sadly, because he's been on well.

And so I'm particularly pleased to have him on today. And I do encourage Alison as to read his very striking piece about his experience in hospital on the New Statesman, the headline,

my life flash before me, hang on, where were the good bits? Chris, I would have hoped featuring on the New Statesman podcast would be one of the good bits.

I don't know what to say, Benish, my life was flashing before me, being on the New Statesman podcast didn't really seem to read them in actual.

I'm really glad to have you back, and I'm glad to hear that you've recovered. So thanks for joining us. And actually, maybe we should start with the state of the health service in Scotland.

Speaking on Thursday afternoon, this episode will come out in a few days time on Monday, but at the time of recording, Scottish A&E units have just had their worst weekly figures ever with almost 2000 people waiting over 12 hours to be seen and less than 50% being seen within the four hour target time.

You've written in your latest piece about this on the New Statesman website that scots are watching their NHS blow up like the Hindenburg.

So can you give us a bit of a picture of what's going wrong there and what it's like?

It's probably easier to say what's not going wrong, to be honest, and I know that this is not particular to Scotland, and the things are going wrong in Wales and England, and I'm sure Northern Ireland as well.

But I think in Scotland, one gets the impression very often that the NHS up here has seen, and has certainly talked about by our political leaders as being somehow superior to what's going on elsewhere in the UK that they'll put more funding into the relationship between the government and the NHS.

Yes, workforce is better, etc, etc. But the reality is that the NHS is a mess and has been for a long time in Scotland, and we've got to the stage now where I think you struggle to find anyone working in any aspect of healthcare who would have very positive things to say about the state of things.

I was in hospital just as we talked about being ill for a bit, and I was actually in the fourth valley hospital, which is the worst A&E waiting times in the country by a long way.

And it was absolutely fascinating seeing it from the inside because it's not so God willing, many of us have to look out for the strain that was on the staff, especially the nurses and the doctors, the consultants.

They just a sheer volume of work they were having to get through, they were understaffed because people had left.

During Covid, or people were working for and moving into the private nursing bank, the volume of people coming in was huge, putting patients into cupboards using them as many wards, the wards themselves were packed full of poor beds that they should have had.

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