THERE used to by a metaphor we employed for rotten legislation.
"This is as useless as the Dangerous Dogs Act," we would all say, nodding in agreement about the latest absurdity produced by our tribunes. No longer. The phrase may now justifiably be deployed in terms of the Patient Rights (Scotland) Act 2011.
Even the name is an in-joke. It promises to deliver, not patients' rights, but patient rights. Well, we have all been patient about this for too long, and we are entitled to ask: which rights are being enforced and what was the point of this piece of legislation?
Passed towards the end of the minority term of the first SNP administration, its aim was "to improve patients' experience of using health services" and "help us meet our aspiration for an NHS which respects the rights of both patients and staff".
Most of what follows in the act is about rights to information, support and feedback, which is fine, and a "charter" of patient rights and responsibilities.
But then came the lulu: "The introduction of a 12 Week Treatment Time Guarantee whereby eligible patients who are receiving planned treatment provided on an inpatient or day-case basis will not wait longer than 12 weeks from the date that the treatment is agreed to the start of that treatment."
This was then enacted via a statutory instrument called The Patient Rights (Treatment Time Guarantee) (Scotland) Regulations 2012, which says the same at greater length and has as its signatory "Nicola Sturgeon, A member of the Scottish Executive."
So where is the sanction in all of this? Reading the statutory instrument this is nowhere to be seen.
No-one receives compensation and no-one is fined, which is about all that can be applauded in this business, as fining a health board would be as self-defeating as fining RBS, which continues to happen in a weird, continuing flagellation of the blameless taxpayer.
Rather than legislation and a bogus war over statistics we need to recognise that fixing one problem, such as emergency department admissions, will cause bulges and spill-overs elsewhere in the system.
The Treatment Time Guarantee law was broken almost 5,000 times, worse than the previous year and on a worsening trend. A repeatedly broken law which carries no sanctions is not worthy of the Statute Book.
Instead, this should rightly be seen as part of the political, not legal process, the consequences borne by politicians not circular sanctions such as fines that would punish the patients and other taxpayers let down by unmet promises.
Our politicians should make strong and transparent pledges and be held to account for them. If they should come up short, they should explain why. The voters would then weigh up the evidence and come to their verdict.
The enshrining in law of a target of this kind is an unhelpful chimera, as are all sanctions and punishments on the cartels of finance or energy that can simply be passed on to the consumers. Ultimately, individuals need to be held to account, not bodies that can simply pass on the pain.
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