Scotland’s Programme for Government a ‘missed opportunity’ to tackle UEC crisis: RCEM

6 May 2025

After enduring another challenging winter, Scotland’s Programme for Government has failed to deliver a tangible plan to address the emergency care crisis.

That’s the response from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine after the First Minister, John Swinney, delivered a speech today (6 May 2025) which laid out his government’s key pledges for the final year of the Scottish Parliament’s current term.

Relating to the NHS, the First Minister’s key pledges were:

Reducing time patients wait for treatment by delivering more than 150,000 extra appointments and procedures, including surgeries and diagnostic tests.
Ensuring more people can see their GP and get cared for in the community – reducing pressures in hospitals
Ensuring more people can be cared for at home, reducing pressures in hospitals by expanding the number of Hospital at Home beds to at least 2,000 by December 2026.

Mr Swinney’s speech coincided with the release of new data by Public Health Scotland which revealed in March, there was an average of 1,925 people waiting to be discharged from hospital, despite being deemed medically well enough to go home.

That’s the highest number of so called ‘delayed discharges’ for the month of March since guidelines changed in 2016.

This is often caused due to a lack of social care support.

Therefore, the system grinds to a halt, with patients stuck in Emergency Departments, often on trolleys in corridors, facing extreme waits because there’s no in-patient beds available.

Today’s figures, which cover March 2025, also show:

120,143 people attended a major Emergency Department in Scotland – a 17.7% increase when compared to February.

One in three patients waited four hours or more in Emergency Departments, one in 9 waited eight hours or more, and one in 23 waited 12 hours or more.

While waits have slightly improved across the board when compared to February, they are significantly higher when compared to March 2018. The numbers waiting four hours or more has increased by 158%, the numbers waiting more than eight hours by 490%, and the numbers waiting more than 12 hours by 803%.

There was a total of 60,129 days spent in hospital by people whose discharge was delayed – a 2.5% increase compared to March 2024 (58,646).

The data comes after Scotland’s EDs also experienced the worst February on record for performance.

Dr Fiona Hunter, Vice President of RCEM Scotland said, “Today’s Programme for Government is a missed opportunity. It was a moment to resuscitate emergency care but instead, we have been left without a tangible plan.

“You just have to simply look at today’s figures from Public Health Scotland to see the level of pressure our Emergency Departments our under – thousands of people waiting extreme and dangerous long stays, often on trolleys, in corridors, because there are no available beds on wards for them to move to.

“And let’s be clear – these aren’t just numbers, data, statistics. Each is a loved family member – mums, dads, grandparents, sons, daughters.

“While we welcome the government’s commitment to improving access to GPs, this can’t be done in isolation. Equal attention is needed at the ‘back door’ of hospitals – ensuring patients who are well enough to be discharged, can be, with the appropriate social care in place.

“Only then will our patients be able to move as they should throughout the hospital system, rather than experiencing significant delays.

“Our members and their colleagues will be deeply disappointed after enduring another challenging winter. It’s left us asking, when will Emergency Care become a political priority?”