00:00In 100 days' time, Scotland faces a choice.
00:04The most significant choice it's had to make in 20 years.
00:09And in 100 days' time, we can save our most precious and treasured National Health Service.
00:15100 days to take our country in a different direction.
00:19And 100 days to give hope back to the people of this great country.
00:24We have a plan to fix our NHS and make it fit for the future.
00:28But above all else, we want to take our NHS out of the hands of incompetent ministers and bureaucrats and managers
00:37and put it back in the hands of the people it truly belongs to.
00:42The patients, the doctors and the nurses.
00:45This election won't decide what happens somewhere else.
00:50It will decide what happens here in Scotland.
00:52It will decide what happens to our schools, our hospitals, our GP services, our social care system.
00:58Our families, our communities, our towns, our cities, our villages and our islands.
01:04This election is about our NHS.
01:07And for any other political party or any other political leader,
01:11including the sitting First Minister John Swinney and the SNP,
01:15they want to make this election about everything but Scotland.
01:18But I am determined to make it about Scotland.
01:20And who can blame them for wanting to talk about anything else apart from their record?
01:25On their watch, more than 830,000 Scots waiting either for treatment or for diagnosis,
01:33including almost 10,000 waiting over two years.
01:37Over two years on an NHS waiting list.
01:40That's 53 times higher than the number in England, despite them having 10 times the size of population we do.
01:49It means for all those thousands of people who wait far too long at A&E
01:54and when the Royal College of Emergency Medicine tell us that that leads to unnecessary deaths in the future.
02:00To all those people that are stuck in hospital, desperate to get out, cleared to leave, but can't,
02:06because they can't access that care package either at home or indeed in a care home.
02:12For all those who have had to remortgage their homes, borrow from friends and family
02:16or have had to travel elsewhere to get the private diagnosis or the private treatment
02:20when they should be getting that here at home.
02:23Those waiting in pain, in anxiety and putting their lives on hold
02:29and all the personal consequence that has on their health, but also on their economic opportunity
02:34and indeed on their friends and family.
02:37That's the record of shame for the SNP.
02:40That's the record of failure.
02:42And that's one that we want to stop and take our NHS into the future.
02:47Now, people often say that all hope has gone.
02:50The NHS can never be fixed.
02:52It's always going to be broken.
02:53It can't go back to those founding principles.
02:56I reject that out of hand.
02:58Our NHS can work.
03:00Our NHS can be fit for the future.
03:03Our NHS can deliver for everyone the way it should.
03:06But what we need is a government that meets the ambition of the people
03:10and works as hard as our NHS staff do if we are to make it a reality.
03:15So what will Scottish Labour do to fix it?
03:18First, we will declare that national waiting times emergency.
03:22To make sure patients can receive the care they need regardless of where it is available across the country.
03:28We will also make sure we take capacity wherever it exists so we can clear those backlogs
03:33and so people don't have to use their own money to get the treatment they need.
03:37We will reform primary care to end the ATM rush for a GP appointment and we will bring back the family doctor.
03:45We will end corridor care and stop all the bed blocking by making sure we invest in social care
03:51and the pathways that people need to get those care packages at home or indeed to have that place in a care home.
03:58We will also bring parity in terms of mental health and physical health by launching the mental health emergency response service
04:06making sure there are trained paramedics, nurses and mental health support responding directly to 999 calls
04:13not untrained police officers.
04:15Now that does two things, one of course it gives better dignity and care to the patient
04:20but it also releases those police officers so they are not stuck in AD departments, they are not stuck in courtrooms
04:26they are not stuck responding to 999 calls, instead they are on the front line supporting their communities and fighting crime.
04:33And ultimately we will cut the bureaucracy so we have got fewer chief executives, fewer finance directors, fewer managers
04:41and more nurses and more doctors on the front line.
04:45Fewer bureaucrats who think their job is to stand up and defend the government and conspire against the patient
04:51and more money to the doctors and the nurses that treat the patients and better outcomes for people across the country.
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