AN ailing health board requested an extra £11.5million in bailout loans from the Scottish Government on top of other crisis payments.
NHS Tayside, which covers the Dundee patch of Health Secretary Shona Robison, received a much lower sum after being allowed to pocket the profits of asset sales.
Scottish Labour Health spokesperson Anas Sarwar MSP said: "The fact the health board is begging for more than £16m shows how serious the situation is.”
NHS Tayside’s financial problems were laid bare in a report by Audit Scotland last year which focused on the body’s finances for 2015/16. At the time the watchdog revealed the board would have to make savings of £175m over a five-year period to be financially stable.
The prospect of making long-term cuts is further complicated by the fact that NHS Tayside owes Ministers over £33m in “brokerage” repayments. These sums – essentially bailouts – were made to help the board break even and live within its means.
Around £13.2m in brokerage was doled out by the Government last year and £5m was made available in 2015/16.
However, correspondence between the Government and NHS Tayside shows that the board initially wanted the sum to be much higher than £5m in that year.
In April 2016, a civil servant emailed a staff member at the board: “The NHS Tayside Board has requested up to £16.5m of additional brokerage in 2015-15.”
The same email outlined how that sum could be chiselled down, such as allowing the board to hold onto the £4.6m of proceeds from disposals relating to Perth and Ashludie.
The board also benefited from a retrospective change in funding for “injury benefit”, a move that gave NHS Tayside around £5.6m.
Another £1.1m became available in relation to annual leave savings, all of which whittled down the £16.5m request. Weeks later NHS Tayside made a formal bid for brokerage of £5m.
A second document confirmed that NHS Tayside has pencilled in another £4m in brokerage in this financial year.
Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary Donald Cameron said: “This is further evidence of the SNP’s gross mismanagement of our health service.
“NHS Tayside has continually faced significant financial challenges at a time when it can least afford it. People will rightly be raising questions about the SNP’s ability both to distribute funding appropriately and to run an effective NHS.”
Sarwar added: "The SNP's treatment of NHS Tayside has been atrocious – and that's despite the fact it is in the Health Secretary Shona Robison's backyard.
“Sadly NHS Tayside is not a unique case. We already know that health boards across Scotland will have to make over £1bn of cuts over the next four years.
A spokesperson for NHS Tayside said, “NHS Tayside requested £5m of brokerage on May 17, 2016 to conclude the accounts for the financial year 2015/16. This formal request was made following continuous discussions with the Scottish Government over the course of 2015/16 and ongoing dialogue in the latter months of 2015/16 relating to a number of areas.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “NHS Tayside applied a range of planned measures to deliver its year end position in 2015-16. This reduced the board’s savings challenge from £16.5 million to £5 million. NHS Tayside formally requested brokerage of £5 million in 2015-16, and the Scottish Government agreed to provide this level of support. This request followed dialogue between NHS Tayside and the Scottish Government, which was held routinely throughout 2015-16.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel