Readers' Letters: Tory vow to deliver 1,000 GPs in four years unrealistic

Leader of the Scottish Conservatives Douglas Ross makes a speech unveiling plans to deliver 1,000 more GPs (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

An article in The Scotsman yesterday (9 February) states that the Conservatives will deliver 1,000 more GPs for Scotland’s NHS in four years.

It takes five years at university, two years as a foundation junior doctor, then three or four years as a trainee GP to produce a basic qualified GP.

When I was working as a GP we trained young GPs and they were of a very high standard, but still needed many years of experience to become what I would call consultant grade experienced fully independent GPs. It is now the case that more than 50 per cent of entrants to medical school and GP training are women. After training many will not wish to work full time. Some will move abroad or develop portfolio careers within the NHS. Many will become assistants or locums and not join the full-time workforce. Gone are the days of GPs working long hours with excessive on-call and part-time working to engender better work/life balance, and a family life is now the norm. Quite rightly so.

So to provide 1,000 new full-time equivalent GPs you will probably need to train 2,000.This will never happen within the timescale suggested. Capping the number of Scottish applicants to medical school does not help. When I retired not long ago as a full-time GP no one was interested in joining our practice as full-time replacement. This will not change and if you ask any GP they will tell you that the profession has been saying this for at least the last 20 years. So much for workforce planning.

(Dr) Gordon Scott, Edinburgh

Talent lack

It is a sure sign of the dearth of ability and talent in the parliamentary SNP at Holyrood that Humza Yousaf is obliged to recycle Fiona Hyslop and Christina McKelvie one more time. He cannot stand the thought of offering Kate Forbes or Fergus Ewing, two rare SNP MSPs who have shown both intelligence and backbone, a place in his administration, and might have feared that they would in any case spurn his offer of poisoned chalices.

Ms Hyslop is a veteran of the Salmond governments since 2007 but was eventually dispensed with by Nicola Sturgeon in 2021, only to be recalled to office last year by Mr Yousaf. Ms McKelvie has served in Holyrood committee and junior ministerial roles.

Can we expect Ms McKelvie, in her new role as Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy, succeeding Elena Whitham, to be more visible than she was as Minister for Older People and Equalities from June 2018 until March 2023 during the pandemic? Surely the fate of older people in hospitals and care homes was such a major issue that one might have expected contributions from her? As it was, she was MIA – missing in action.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Data doubt

Michael Matheson resigns days before the Corporate Body’s report into his £11,000 data charge for using his iPad overseas is published, but he has not yet seen the report.

Aye, right!

Brian Barbour, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland

Advice wanted?

Nationalist minister Mairi McAllan informed us in Holyrood recently that “more often than not, world leaders are seeking advice from this SNP administration”. I think the reaction of most to that claim was a wry smile and a shake of the head. Was she really expecting a statement like that to be accepted? Could she and her colleagues, perhaps existing in some make-believe world, really have convinced themselves that this was true?

Of course, someone made a Freedom of Information request. And of course, no trace could be found of these “world leaders" lining up for advice from this SNP-Green administration; the very idea is preposterous. In fact, the FOI request revealed that the only recorded contact with any kind of world leader was a letter sent by the FM to the President of Zambia.

Were it not so pathetic, it would be funny.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Slim pickings

Will it not be fascinating to compare the pledges that Sir Keir Starmer will make at the next election to those pledges he made during the Labour leadership election in 2020? In just four years, his proposed General Election manifesto will have lost leadership pledges such as a Green New Deal, higher tax rates for top earners, the nationalisation of rail, mail, water and energy and the scrapping of tuition fees. The Labour manifesto will offer slim pickings indeed.

Richard Allison, Edinburgh

No courage