Katy said:

“As the NHS celebrates its sixtieth birthday next month, the state of the health service will be as hotly debated as ever. Throughout the past six decades every Scot will have benefited from NHS services. There is no other institution that commands the degree of public pride and respect as the National Health Service.

“I believe that the NHS should stay true to its founding principles. This to me means a health service that works 24 hours to look after the health of all of our patients.

“That’s why I conducted my recent NHS Health Survey, and am still welcoming comments from residents giving me their thoughts on local services.

“Liberal Democrats are calling for a full review of the way the NHS provides care in the community but we are not advocating a return to the dark days when GPs alone shouldered the burden of arduous on-call rotas.

“Instead of bullying doctors into providing limited services for extended hours, Ministers should be sitting round the table with doctors and representatives from other key health areas to plan the best way to provide a 24 hour care in the community.

“2008 must be the year individual patients regain 24 hour health care in their local community.”

This policy builds on Liberal Democrat success in Scotland where we introduced free personal care for the elderly, free eye and dental check ups and were first with a smoking ban. In the very different health and social landscape in England, it is great to see the lessons we learnt and the challenges we faced being used to inform party policy in England.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats have announced a new £40 million plan to ensure everyone in Scotland has access to an NHS dentist. The plan will deliver 200 more dentists, a new Dental School and more dental check ups in schools. Katy said:

“Scottish Liberal Democrats have already introduced free dental checks across Scotland, but in areas such as Glasgow Kelvin finding an NHS dentist can be really difficult, as some local residents have already told me. That is why we will launch a new recruitment drive to bring in an additional 200 dentists to Scotland to work primarily as salaried NHS dentists. We will prioritise areas of the country like Glasgow Kelvin, where access to NHS dentists is more difficult.”

Some estimates suggest a third of Scottish children don’t have an NHS dentist. This has got to be tackled. We will ensure dentists do check ups in our local schools. Improving oral health in children is the sort of preventative measure that will reduce the burden on the NHS in the future. This is spending now to save in the future. The commitment to a new Dental School will give a much needed boost to the numbers of new dentists entering the workforce. We will invest over the next four years in the new dentists that people across the West End and the city center need.”

• Better health care closer to where you live – a major building programme for 100 new local health centres or refurbished community hospitals, 2000 more nurses and 200 additional dentists and a proposed Total Waiting Time Guarantee of 6 months from start to finish from when you contact your doctor to receiving treatment
• Help to chose a healthier lifestyle – promoting healthy local food, encouraging a total cultural change for alchol and smoking and discouraging under age purchases and protecting green spaces so people have places to take exercise
• Children to get the best start in life – every child to get 1 hour physical activity every day, extend free fruit to all primary pupils and expand breakfast clubs to all schools and increase the role of school nurses

While the questions from the 111 strong audience of health service workers focused primarily on privatisation fears for the NHS, equal pay issues and the implementation of Agenda for Change, Katy was also keen to point out our achievements for the wider health issues.

“As a party we introduced the free eye and dental checks that have proved so successul. Glasgow Kelvin’s children now have far healthier teeth as a result. The smoking ban has proved hugely popular and we have already seen the difference in cleaner, pleasanter pubs, clubs and restaurants around the city and more people trying to give up. Free personal care for the elderly was also a flagship policy for our party. Despite some discussion over funding arrangements, there is no doubt it has helped many more Glaswegians to stay in their own homes longer and eased the financial worries that elderly residents often face over how to cope as they get older and need more support.”

“We have only just got started though and there is much more to do. A lot of health issues are a bit like a supertanker – it takes ages to turn them around, but once you have got the direction right, there is real power for change in a new direction. Our party has put health promotion at the heart of its plans, as clearly prevention is better than cure. But we also want to ensure that everyone has access to high quality health care when they need it, as locally as possible.”

To read more about the Lib Dem plans for health, then visit the Scottish Liberal Democrat website.

Katy was one of only 3 political party representatives who attended the Royal College of Nursing hustings with nurses from across Glasgow on Thursday 15th March. The Liberal Democrats take the concerns of nurses seriously and Katy welcomed the opportunity to engage in discussion with staff on the front line.

A whole range of issues were covered, from the recent pay rise (which is not being staggered in Scotland, unlike in England where the Liberal Democrats are not part of the government), to car parking charges, PFI, progress on Agenda for Change and the operation of NHS 24.

Katy’s key messages were that the Liberal Democrats were committed to making health care as local as possible, were focused on health promotion to reduce the levels of ill health and are serious about consulting the public on major changes to health care in their areas were well received by the audience.

For further information on Liberal Democrat policies on health care read the pre-manifesto from the Scottish Lib Dems.