I believe the Scottish Government is betraying communities in Fife as Health Secretary Neil Gray refused to commit to using new NHS capital funding to deliver on the long-promised new health centres in Lochgelly and Kincardine despite the Scottish Government receiving record new funding for its budget this year.
Funding has been announced to replace Monklands Hospital in NHS Lanarkshire, the Belford Hospital in NHS Highland, and delivering a new Eye Pavilion elective centre in NHS Lothian but as yet no further projects have been announced to benefit from the new funding.
I have been calling on the Scottish Government to honour the promises made over the last decade to deliver replacements for the health centres deemed “older facilities that no longer meet the needs of the local populations” by NHS Fife, and I wrote to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care to highlight the need for funding.
However, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Neil Gray MSP, responded citing the “continued challenge and uncertainty in the capital funding position”, “high levels of construction inflation” that has “permanently increased the cost of delivering infrastructure” and “the reductions to our capital funding that we have seen in recent years” as reasons for the Scottish Government being unable to commit to “all projects we might wish to”.
This is despite promises over the last decade from the Scottish Government that these projects would be delivered, including former First Minister Humza Yousaf MSP who gave his “absolute assurance” and “absolute confirmation” that funding would be found for the new health centre when the Scottish Government received the outline business case in a response to a question asked by Annabelle Ewing MSP in the Chamber on 2 March 2023 when he was Health Secretary.
Communities in Fife have been promised these new centres for years now and NHS Fife have been working with communities to plan these appropriately, so the Health Secretary’s response to my concerns is disappointing to say the least.
What is clear to me from the mealy-mouthed response is that the Scottish Government has no intention of delivering on the promises it has made to these communities for over a decade now.
We need functional and modern health centres, not only to treat those in need but to recruit and retain GPs in an area already experiencing issues with GP access.
These facilities have already been deemed not fit for purpose by NHS Fife and even the former First Minister made clear the need for these projects to go ahead.
After the commitments of the Scottish Government, Ministers, and MSPs who made delivery of these health centres key to their election campaigns, the people of Lochgelly and Kincardine will rightly feel anger and betrayal at the abandonment of these projects.
I am calling on the Scottish Government to honour the commitments it has made – they have the funding, and they now need to make that funding available to NHS Fife and get these facilities built.
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