Holyrood’s first New Year debate? Independence - Sue Webber

This is a reflective time of year when most of us think back on the good things from the past 12 months and look forward to good things to come.

Sue Webber is a Scottish Conservative MSP for the Lothians

With the global cost-of-living crisis, good cheer might be thinner on the ground than usual, but it should be a time for coming together, be it at family, community, or national level, to tackle together the problems which affect us all. Accentuate the positives, as the song says.

But it will surprise no-one that the Scottish Parliament’s first debate when MSPs return on January 8 is independence, despite the obvious fact there will be no referendum next year or any kind of election. 2023 should therefore be entirely dedicated to getting things done, not bitter arguments deigned only to create division.

It is not as if there’s nothing to do, and a health service on its knees ─ for which the SNP Scottish Government has proportionately more resources than the English NHS ─ is the perfect example.

Instead of listening to people who know what they are talking about and accept their responsibilities, they manipulate statistics to dupe you into believing they are better at running health care than Westminster, when all that matters is whether the Scottish service is as good as it should be for all the money the SNP has available.

No, health care in England is not as good as it should be, but the Scottish Government should be concentrating on its duties, not seeking spurious comparisons to evade accountability for an appalling record.

Seriously ill people in Lothian are now waiting an average of nearly two hours for an ambulance, 119 minutes compared to 48 minutes last year and just 37 minutes in 2018.

When they eventually get to hospital, two-thirds of emergency patients arriving at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary waited over four hours for treatment last month. In some hospitals, patients needing admitted over Christmas waited 20 hours for a bed.

Why? Because A&E departments are way over capacity, the RIE regularly well over 200 per cent beyond its limit and the Western General’s small accident facility 300 per cent over.

Across Scotland, by June over 450,000 patients were waiting for an outpatient appointment and over 150,000 waiting for tests, and no wonder West Lothian consultant Dr Maria Corretge this year described cancer procedures as “scandalous” and stroke treatment “substandard”.

If you are waiting for non-emergency, but life-changing treatment, join the queue of 12,000 Scottish people waiting for over a year for orthopaedic surgery, as fewer operations are performed in NHS hospitals compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Even finding a GP who can refer you for tests is a challenge if South-East Edinburgh is anything to go by, where only four out of 13 practices are still open for registration, and this year I revealed how our practice in Currie was actually encouraging existing patients to go elsewhere.

Facilities aren’t the problem because operating theatres are under-used, but there’s not enough staff and now the SNP’s high tax agenda is persuading consultants to head south where they will be very welcome. One contacted me last week.

And I haven’t mentioned the highest rate of drug deaths in Europe, but no, let’s start 2023 talking about independence. That’s all the SNP can offer.

Sue Webber is a Lothian Scottish Conservative MSP