• Patients “left in the lurch” as month long waits for last minute cancelled ops to be rearranged more than double
• Scot Lib Dems to lead debate calling for immediate teacher workforce plan

Patients “left in the lurch” as month long waits for last minute cancelled ops to be rearranged more than double

Close to 20,000 operations cancelled at the last minute took more than 28-days to rearrange last year, in breach of the NHS’s own standard, research by the House of Commons Library commissioned by the Liberal Democrats has revealed.

It means that 23% of the 85,400 elective operations cancelled at the last minute in 2024/25 took longer than a month to rearrange. This represents a three-fold increase on 2015/16’s figure of 7%.

The Liberal Democrats said the figures showed patients being “left in the lurch” as they waited for “potentially life altering operations”. The party called on the Government to end its “embrace of dither and delay” and take action on rebuilding crumbling hospitals and end the crisis in social care “so crucial to fixing the underlying problem in the health service”.

The data also shows that the number of last minute cancellations breaching the health service’s 28-day standard has also risen significantly from 9,000 in 2015/16 to 19,400 last year. That represents an 115% increase on the waits for rescheduled last minute cancellations a decade ago. In the past year alone the number of these breaches has jumped by around 1,500, up 8% to the highest level post the pandemic.

The data also revealed a breakdown on NHS Trusts with the most breaches of the 28-day standard. The Trust with the highest number of breaches that had not experienced a recent merger was University Hospitals Leicester with 942 and then followed by Surrey and Sussex Healthcare with 710.

Of the 108 NHS Trusts that reported full data for each year since 2015/16, 73 saw a rise in the number of breaches.

Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson, Helen Morgan MP said:

Patients are being left in the lurch, forced to wait in pain and distress for potentially life altering operations. Each of these delays represents an extra month that someone’s misery is prolonged.

This is the devastating legacy of the Conservatives neglect of this NHS, but the Labour government is proving aimless in how to turn this around with ill-thought through reforms and kicking vital projects into the long-grass.

This embrace of dither and delay on building new hospitals or fixing the crisis in social care, so crucial to fixing the underlying problem in the health service, is failing patients. It is time Ministers realised this and showed real ambition in ending these unacceptable delays and getting patients the care they deserve.

Scot Lib Dems to lead debate calling for immediate teacher workforce plan

Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Willie Rennie will lead a Scottish Parliament debate on Wednesday afternoon in which his party will call for an immediate teacher workforce plan to counter declines in key subjects like Maths and Physics and a lack of permanent contracts for teaching staff.

Scottish Liberal Democrat analysis has revealed that since the SNP came to power:

• There are 363 fewer Maths teachers, a 13.0% decrease, with 32 maths teachers lost in the last year alone.
• There are 91 fewer Physics teachers, a 10.3% decrease, with 18 fewer Physics teachers in the last year alone.
• There are 216 fewer Computing Studies teachers, a 28.2% decrease, with 28 fewer in the last year alone.
• There are 180 fewer Technical Education teachers, a 13.4% decrease.
  Modern languages teachers have fallen by more than a fifth.
• In 2016/17, 56.5% of post-induction scheme teachers found full-time permanent employment, but that has now dropped to just 24.9% in 2023/24.

Commenting ahead of the debate, Willie Rennie MSP said:

The SNP have turned teacher recruitment into a dog’s breakfast.

The teaching of science, technology, engineering and maths in our schools is integral to Scotland’s economic future but pupils are missing out on hundreds of teachers, desperately needed to inspire them, lift attainment and propel them on towards high-skill high-pay jobs.

This means there is a vicious cycle that diminishes the skills of future generations and undermines teacher recruitment for years to come. This impact is even more pronounced in remote and rural areas.

At the same time, there are lots of talented staff who cannot find permanent jobs. What’s the point in training more teachers if there are no jobs for them to slot into?

This debate is about saying to the Scottish Government, and the Education Secretary in particular, that enough is enough.

The Scottish Government need to introduce more incentives to attract suitable people, offer routes to match trainees to jobs and an immediate workforce plan to ensure our kids get the best education.