THE SNP-Green Scottish government was urged to “wake up” today following the revelation that almost 25 times more patients wait at least two years for NHS treatment in Scotland than in England.

Statistics from Public Health Scotland and NHS England obtained by the Scottish Labour Party show that despite Scotland having less than 10 per cent of the population of its southern neighbour, thousands more Scottish NHS patients are waiting longer.

As of December 2023, a staggering 17,761 people had already waited 18 months or more for treatment, either as an in-patient or out-patient, by the Scottish health service, 35 per cent more than the 13,164 waiting south of the border.

Of that number, 7,179 patients in Scotland have been waiting more than two years to be treated and 1,446 have been waiting more than three years, compared with just 282 waiting two years or more in England — an astonishing 2,443 per cent a difference.

First Minister Humza Yousaf gave a pledge at last autumn’s SNP conference that he would boost NHS spending by £300 million to cut waiting lists to under 100,000.

Since then, however, he has had to contend with the loss of health secretary Michael Matheson, who quit amid a scandal surrounding his misuse of a parliamentary iPad, and waiting targets across the Scottish NHS — from A&E to cancer treatment — continuing to be missed, with little in the way of progress towards reducing the number of people queuing for care from the current almost one in six of the population. 

Concerns grew further last month when, hard on the heels of new Health Secretary Neil Gray telling ITV’s Representing Border programme that he would be “happy to consider” greater use of the private sector to cut waiting lists, spending watchdog Audit Scotland warned that the Scottish NHS suffered from there being “no overall vision.”

Scottish Labour’s Jackie Baillie commented: “It’s clear for all to see that Neil Gray has inherited an unholy mess from his predecessors, including Humza Yousaf.

“That so many more Scots are waiting over three years for treatment than [in] England is shocking and the need for action could not be greater.

 “When it comes to the NHS, the SNP’s record is a blizzard of rhetoric to hide a litany of deadly failures.

“We can’t go on like this. Neil Gray must wake up to this ticking time bomb and act before more lives are put on the line.”

A Scottish government spokesperson said: “We are committed to driving down waiting times. We are working with NHS Boards to increase productivity and capacity, and to respond to demand through service innovation and redesign.”