The Glasgow-based Oceanic Group is known for holding glitzy ceremonies across the UK, Ireland and the United States, but multiple former staff allege its ‘rogue’ boss failed to pay them the wages they were due.
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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.
The Glasgow-based Oceanic Group is known for holding glitzy ceremonies across the UK, Ireland and the United States, but multiple former staff allege its ‘rogue’ boss failed to pay them the wages they were due.
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