David Mundell MP: speeches

Speeches

• 11 Dec 2025 · St Andrew’s Day and Scottish Affairs · Hansard source

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  I do. What the hon. Lady points to is the shuffling of figures that we have just seen, so that the best figures are presented, but those 86,000 people I mentioned who have been on waiting lists for more than a year are erased from the debate. It is all about smoke and mirrors. Analysis of this astonishing increase in waiting times by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine found that it has likely contributed to more than 1,000 needless deaths, despite the best efforts of frontline staff who have been failed by the SNP’s inaction. And what of the strain on those hard-working NHS workers? Last year, data revealed that NHS frontline staff were forced to cover understaffed shifts on 348,675 occasions. That is hundreds of thousands of times when there were simply not enough staff on hospital wards and in other care settings to meet Scotland’s healthcare needs. A recent report by the Royal College of Nursing Scotland warned that over the year to May 2025, “at no point has NHS Scotland employed the number of nursing staff needed to deliver safe and effective care.” The warning signs have been there for years, but the Scottish Government have failed to act on workforce planning, and it is patients and health service workers who are paying the price of that failure. Of course, the healthcare crisis in Scotland is not restricted to our hospitals. Anyone who represents a rural constituency like mine will be acutely aware of the often severe pressure on GP services, where face-to-face appointments can be difficult to obtain, and that is to say nothing of the near impossible job of getting registered with an NHS dentist. In Dumfries and Galloway, which has one of the worst rates of NHS dental registration, more than 40% of residents are not registered with a dentist. That is not because they do not want to be, but because practices are not taking on new patients, and thousands of existing patients have been deregistered.

• 11 Dec 2025 · St Andrew’s Day and Scottish Affairs · Hansard source

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  I am afraid we are back to the old record, Madam Deputy Speaker. We have heard it so many times. It does not wear thin; it must be digital now, so that it can be reproduced in just the same words that I have heard for the last 20-odd years. What the hon. Gentleman says does not relate to the experience of my constituents in Dumfries and Galloway when getting a dentist. They hold the Scottish Government accountable for whether or not they have a dentist, and for the promises that the Scottish Government have made in that regard. SNP Ministers say that the situation with dentists is “challenging”, but that is no substitute for the action we need to solve Scotland’s dental deserts, like Dumfries and Galloway. And what of Scotland’s social care system—the very services meant to protect the vulnerable, the elderly, and those in need? Unions and public service watchdogs have repeatedly condemned persistent delays in discharging patients. Those delays clog up hospitals and deny timely care to people who should be at home or in community care. Staffing is chronically inadequate, care homes are overstretched, home care services are chaotic, and families often wait weeks—sometimes months—to get support for loved ones. Long-standing plans to deliver a national care service collapsed this year, having consumed tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, but without delivering a single additional hour of social care to those who need it. It is the record of the SNP Government summed up: make bold promises of reform; spend millions of pounds; blame everybody else, but especially Westminster, when it all falls apart. For years, the SNP has made bold promises—promises of better health care, stronger social care, more GPs, more nurses, reduced waiting lists and an improved social care framework, but the facts speak for themselves. GP and dentist numbers remain too low, and constituents like mine struggle to get appointments. Too many newly qualified young medical professionals leave Scotland, even as vacancies are unfilled. More than £2 billion has been spent on agency and bank nurses, and midwives, over the past five years because of a lack of proper workforce planning. One in nine of Scotland’s population is currently on an NHS waiting list in Scotland, and despite the hard work of NHS staff working in the most challenging of circumstances, public satisfaction with the NHS in Scotland has plummeted to the lowest level since devolution. Once we strip away all the self-congratulatory boasting of Scottish Government Ministers, this is the reality of the NHS in Scotland after two decades of SNP rule: an older person waiting weeks for home care; a mother with a child waiting years for mental-health support; a nurse driven to burnout; a cancer patient left on a waiting list so long that even Scotland’s First Minister says it is “not acceptable”.

• 11 Dec 2025 · St Andrew’s Day and Scottish Affairs · Hansard source

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  I agree with the hon. Lady, but there also needs to be fundamental acknowledgment that there has not been the workforce planning that was required and that is the responsibility of the Scottish Government, not people in England or Wales or somewhere else. These responsibilities lie with the Scottish Government, and they should be held accountable for the way they have exercised them. Given the list of deficiencies that I have set out in relation to the Scottish Government on a whole range of issues, most particularly the NHS, let us demand better from Scotland’s Government on behalf of all of Scotland.

• 11 Dec 2025 · St Andrew’s Day and Scottish Affairs · Hansard source

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  I am sure that we do not want to go down the blind alley of a long discussion about this flood prevention scheme, but it was the subject of a public inquiry, because—this is one of the most important parts of the issue—it does not command public support. That, in my view, is the reason why there have been numerous delays and it has not been progressed. Today is the opportunity to end all the uncertainty and say, “No, this project is not going ahead.” But of course, in our democracy, it will be for councillors to decide, and we will respect their decision. As all of us representing constituencies in Scotland know only too well, the story of the past two decades of SNP government has been one of stagnation, mismanagement and, in many cases, outright failure in stewardship of our public services. Education standards in Scotland’s schools are on the slide. We have fewer police on the streets, and those streets and roads are in a poor state of repair, as vital transport infrastructure does not receive the investment that it needs. But of all Scotland’s public services, few are under such intolerable strain as our NHS. Just a few weeks ago, the SNP’s Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care was boasting of cutting NHS waiting times, while ignoring the fact that there are now 86,000 cases of patients who have been stuck for more than a year on waiting lists. That is higher than in 2022, when the Scottish Government pledged to “eradicate” the problem by September 2024. More than a year on from that broken promise, SNP Ministers are claiming that they will wipe out waits of over 12 months, this time by March next year—conveniently, just in time for May’s election.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State will be aware that since the law change, the number of children who have received NHS prescriptions for medical cannabis for severe epilepsy has been pitifully low. Families and campaigners believe that part of the reason is that the Home Office still has large responsibility for those products. Will the Secretary of State meet me and other interested MPs to discuss whether his Department could take more responsibility?