Energy minister rebuked by stats authority over Scottish NHS claims

A UK energy minister has been rebuked by the statistics authority over claims he made about the Scottish NHS.

Michael Shanks released a video on his X account in November last year, aping a news broadcast and accusing the Scottish Government of “doctoring” figures on NHS waiting times.

In his video, Mr Shanks said 12,000 people had been waiting for treatment for more than two years in Scotland compared to just 168 in England.

UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) deputy chairwoman Penny Young warned against comparing the figures for both countries, due to different data collection methods, as well as differentiating between the number of people waiting and the number of open waits – which are the method used to record waiting times in Scotland.

She said: “We know that many users want to be able to compare NHS performance across the UK and that it is frustrating for them when they are unable to do so.

“We therefore support and encourage efforts to produce more comparable data where possible.

“In this case, however, producers have explained that for planned care, different healthcare policies, commissioning processes and patient data systems make it particularly challenging.”

The minister also claimed in his video that, if a patient cannot make an appointment they are given, then the waiting time clock resets.

This, he said, has the effect of “looking like waiting times are going down, but in reality what’s happening is it’s the same waiting lists, the same patients waiting for the important treatment they need, and the NHS in Scotland continuing to decline”.

Ms Young wrote that while it is the case that waiting times clocks are reset if a patient misses their appointment or refuses “two or more reasonable offers of appointments”, it does not reduce the size of overall waiting lists.

Such resets, however, could have an impact on longer waits, reducing the number of ongoing waits of more than a year if the length of wait returns to zero.

Ms Young wrote: “Waiting times are of high public interest across the UK and it is vital that statistics about them are used appropriately to support public debate.

“We accept that the public and users will be frustrated about the limitations in comparability.

“But to uphold public confidence in statistics, we encourage you to ensure statements containing statistics are presented clearly and with sufficient context to avoid the potential for people to be misled.”

Mr Shanks’s video was reported to the UKSA by SNP MSP Kevin Stewart, who described it as “grossly inappropriate” and “deeply offensive” to NHS staff.

“It is a shame that Mr Shanks and his colleagues are too busy spreading misinformation through social media videos to welcome the progress made under First Minister John Swinney’s leadership, including the fact that waits in Scotland’s NHS are down for a sixth month in a row,” he said.

“It is only right that Mr Shanks has now been rebuked by the statistics authority for this entirely incorrect and deliberate misrepresentation of waiting times data, and I welcome the intervention from the watchdog.

“Mr Shanks should now do the right thing and apologise to our NHS staff who have worked valiantly to bring waiting times down.”

While waiting times are continuing to reduce, the Scottish Government remains well short of its target of reducing year-long waits for treatment by March of this year.

A Scottish Labour spokeswoman said: “The scale of the crisis in our NHS is in no doubt – hundreds of thousands of Scots stuck on NHS waiting lists, thousands of dangerously long waits in A&E every week and a daily battle for those trying to reach a GP.

“The SNP should focus on fixing the crisis it has created.”