JOHN Swinney tore into the “stupid ideas” of Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay after being grilled on his plans to bolster the NHS.
Findlay attempted to take the First Minister to task at FMQs after Swinney announced in a speech in Edinburgh this week his plan to reduce NHS waiting lists and make it easier to get GP appointments.
He announced measures he said would put the health service "on a path of modernisation and renewal", pledging the NHS would carry out an extra 150,000 appointments and procedures in the coming year.
The plan would include 10,000 extra appointments through "smarter working" at national treatment centres.
Findlay asked when the national treatment centres would "actually open", pointing out several had not done so yet in the likes of Perth, Lanarkshire, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.
But in pledging that he would deliver the centres, Swinney ripped into the way in which the Conservative UK Government had slashed capital budgets while Findley pushed for him to back the “stupid ideas” of former prime minister Liz Truss.
Swinney said: “Here’s some truth for Parliament. In the years of austerity, under the Conservative government, the capital budgets of the devolved governments and the UK Government were slashed.
“Why? Because of economic and fiscal incompetence by the Conservatives.
“I am now going to deliver the national treatment centres, but what has not helped me has been Russell Findlay’s support for the economics of the madhouse brought forward by Liz Truss, who he wanted me to follow, he wanted me to do exactly what Liz Truss had done.
“Thank goodness I never followed the stupid ideas of Liz Truss and Russell Findlay.”
After Anas Sarwar (above) accused the SNP of having “lost touch with reality” on the NHS – referencing criticism of the plan from the Royal College of Nursing and British Medical Association – Swinney showed up the Scottish Labour leader as the Tory benches started gesturing in the middle of their exchange.
“I see the allies have come to the rescue,” the First Minister said as the Presiding Officer was forced to intervene.
As the session continued, Swinney criticised Sarwar for not offering any of his own solutions to the problems facing the NHS.
He also highlighted the lack of backing for Waspi women from Scottish Labour MPs at Westminster this week after all bar one abstained in a vote to call for on the UK Government to deliver compensation.
“There was not a single solution offered by Anas Sarwar in all of that long diatribe to Parliament because he is high on rhetoric and low on delivery,” Swinney said.
“Mr Sarwar promised the Waspi women in Scotland that he would be at their side and at the first whiff of change the Labour government came in shut the door on the Waspi women.
“That’s why Mr Sarwar is high on rhetoric, low on delivery and why Scotland doesn’t take him seriously.”
Sarwar has previously insisted a decision by the UK Government not to give compensation to 1950s-born women affected by poorly-communicated changes to the state pension age was “wrong”.
He voted with his MSPs at Holyrood to call for compensation, but it appeared he did not manage to have any influence on Scottish Labour MPs at Westminster.
The vote at Westminster passed by 105 votes to 0, but it is likely to be seen simply as a symbolic show of support for the compensation proposal as private members’ bills introduced by MPs face a battle to become law if they do not receive Government support and fail to secure parliamentary time to clear the necessary stages.
The decision by the Labour Government not to offer compensation has been described as “extremely unusual” by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman after it recommended in a report last year that each person affected should receive between £1000 and £2950.
