The Scottish Government says the move was needed to tackle the "burden" caused by the growth in AI-assisted objections to energy projects. Critics say it is a way to mute public opposition.
An investment vehicle managed by JP Morgan and state-backed firms from France, Norway and China own Scottish wind farms which have paid tens of millions in dividends this decade.
An anti-immigration protest in Glasgow that turned violent last weekend attracted several hundred people. Those attending included loyalists from Northern Ireland with criminal convictions.
Scottish Labour has attacked the Scottish Government’s record on NHS waiting times repeatedly in recent years.
During first minister’s questions on 10 October, party leader Anas Sarwar claimed some people had been waiting years for treatment as targets were missed.
Some people have been waiting since 2017 for urology treatment, which is a seven-year wait; some have been waiting for general surgery since 2018, which is more than six years; and some have waited more than five years for ophthalmology, gynaecology or orthopaedic treatment.
Ferret Fact Service looked at this claim and found it Mostly True.
Waiting times data is published regularly by Public Health Scotland. The statistics cited by Scottish Labour come from a freedom of information (FOI) request it sent..
The data shows the maximum waiting times that patients were experiencing as of 30 June 2024.
Statistics are broken down by the type of treatment, showing both the total number of “waits” for each category. Scottish NHS data uses the term “waits” rather than patients because sometimes people waiting for treatment can be on more than one waiting list, so the data does not “reflect the actual number of individuals involved”.
Sarwar referenced urology treatment, general surgery, ophthalmology, gynaecology and orthopaedics.
He claimed there was an ongoing wait for urology treatment for over seven years. According to NHS data, the longest wait was 2,692 days, which works out at seven years and four months.
He also stated there was a wait for general surgery from 2018, which is over six years. This is also correct, according to the data.
The figures for ophthalmology, gynaecology and orthopaedics also show waits of more than five years, as Sarwar claimed.
In the FOI release, Public Health Scotland warned that information on the longest waits, cited by Sarwar, should be treated with caution.
This is because of a risk that potential “inaccuracies in the information recorded” could mean the longest waits might be “erroneously long”.
The Scottish Government planned to eradicate long waits in the NHS after new targets were introduced in 2022.
For outpatients in most specialties, two-year waits were to be ended by August 2022, with 18-month waits eradicated by December 2022 and one-year waits stopped by the end of March 2023.
According to Public Health Scotland, none of these targets have been achieved and “for waits over 52 weeks and waits over 78 weeks, the position has worsened since the original announcement”.
The latest data shows 1,324 waits of more than three years in Scotland.
Scottish Labour is right in its claim that the longest recorded waits in the NHS are up to seven years long. Public Health Scotland have warned that some of these wait times may be erroneous and due to incorrect coding. According to the latest figures, more than 1,300 waits are more than three years long.
Posters appeared on social media purporting to be from the local authority, but they are fake.
Academics are raising concerns that an increasing percentage of young people, unable to cope with school, are withdrawing into their bedrooms, while families claim support is “woefully inadequate”.
Everyone’s medical history and records should be confidential and secure in the hands of the NHS. But there have been serious privacy breaches resulting in dozens of staff being disciplined and police investigations.
Lives are being lost because people are failing to get mental health support when they most urgently need it, a Ferret investigation has found.
