FOLLOWING the scandal of charitable donations being used to bail out crisis-hit health board NHS Tayside, Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard called for the resignation of Shona Robison, Scotland’s beleaguered Health Secretary. Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie then joined the call. 

These calls have sounded as the problems in Scotland’s health and social care system rapidly mount up. 

Across Scotland there is a GP crisis. From Shetland to Dumfries and all stops in between, communities are seeing their local GP practices buckling under the pressure of increased demand, with fewer doctors to cover this growing need.

 We need an additional 856 GPs by 2021 just to plug the gap, yet training places remain unfilled and, with 36 per cent of all GPs over 50 years age, the demographics are going in the wrong direction. This is a very real here-and-now crisis. 

Last summer I held a drop-in session for doctors and practice managers — what they told me was shocking.

• 40 per cent of GP practices across the Lothian region have closed their lists to new patients because of a lack of available doctors.
• Locum cover is being relied upon to keep the doors open. With cover costing up to £1,400 per day, only 23 per cent of practices were able to find locum cover for planned GP absence and only 9 per cent for unplanned absence. 
• When vacancies for partners are advertised, there are often zero applicants for posts. We have the highest number of direct health board managed practices since records began, with 52 so-called 2C practices. 
• Health centre staff are under huge pressure trying to cope with rising demand but with fewer GPs.

At Carmondean in Livingston and East Craigs in Edinburgh, whole practices have gone under and in the neighbouring village to where I live, Stoneyburn, GP resignations mean that the health board is facing an acute crisis in trying to provide ongoing services for local people. 

This is an abject failure of long-term planning by the Scottish government. It cannot pass the buck or blame to anyone else after 11 years in power.

We cannot go on like this. While the new GP contract will hopefully begin to address some of these issues, what we really need is effective planning and investment to sustain the future of the general practice workforce. It is the backbone of the NHS. 

But it is not just general practice where the problems are acute. In Lothian waiting times are increasing. Orthopaedics patients are having to wait 44 weeks simply to get an appointment, never mind a procedure.

In Paisley, Nicola Sturgeon gave commitments to retain the children’s ward at the Royal Alexandra Hospital only for it to then be closed. 

At St John’s, the children’s ward has been closed to in patients out of hours since last July, with little sign of services returning. 

Scotland’s rate of drug deaths is the worst in Europe, yet as Cabinet Secretary and a Dundee MSP whose city is particularly badly affected by these deaths, Robison saw fit to cut the budget of drug and alcohol partnerships by £15 million at time when money was needed more than ever.

However, to my mind, it is the scandalous way in which survivors of transvaginal mesh were treated that exemplifies why she has to go.

By suspending mesh implant surgery in June 2014, Scotland had the chance to lead the world by exposing those who have placed women’s health at risk for the sake of financial gain. 

Instead, the review was compromised by conflicts of interests with each and every one of the four experts appointed to the review having been paid in the past by mesh manufacturers. 

The mesh survivors who sat on the review were excluded from proceedings for 10 months as meetings went on behind their backs, and one of the experts resigned in disgust because vital safety evidence has not been included. The report was a whitewash — in short, the Scottish government blew it.

Despite their own devastating injuries which have destroyed not only their lives but the lives of their families, the Scottish mesh survivors have fought for years to educate the world on the dangers of mesh. 

The recent Westminster debate wouldn’t have happened without their dogged work. 

They were betrayed by Robison who has repeatedly failed to do the right thing.

For these reasons and many more it is time for her to go before the NHS suffers any more damage.

Neil Findlay is Labour MSP for Lothian.