Ambulance Service (Hansard, 17 April 1985)

§ 4. Mr. Willie W. Hamilton
asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the future of the Scottish ambulance service.

§ Mr. John MacKay
Last year my Department issued a document inviting views on the present organisation and management structure of the Scottish ambulance service. The comments received are being considered, and the outcome will be announced later.

§ Mr. Hamilton
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there are great suspicions that the purpose of the consultative document is eventually to hand the service over to private cowboy profiteers, and that considerable pressure is being put on Conservative Back Benchers so that that aim can be achieved? Will he give a categorical assurance that that is not the Government's purpose and that the service will not be handed over to private commercial enterprises, as there is abundant evidence that it is an efficient public enterprise?

§ Mr. MacKay
The document issued last August discussed whether alterations in the service might improve the service for patients and lead to a more economic and efficient use of resources, especially in the light of the 249 growth of the use of day hospitals and the increasing demands on the ambulance service in running patients to and from day hospitals. Private contractors are already used to a limited extent in some areas for non-emergency routine transport,and there may be scope to extend their use. However, there is no intention at the back of my mind to privatise the whole ambulance service in Scotland, as the hon. Gentleman's fertile imagination suggests.

§ Mr. Bruce
Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that in present circumstances the Scottish ambulace service is chronically under-funded? In my constituency, which has the fastest rate of growth of any part of Britain, new communities which have been asking for ambulance services for years have still not been allocated any. When a road accident occurs, there is sometimes a delay of over an hour before an ambulance arrives. Proposals to close rural maternity hospitals will further increase the strain on the ambulance service, as has the expansion of Aberdeen airport over the past few years. The extra strains have not been adequately supported or funded and there has been no adequate response to representations made.

§ Mr. MacKay
The hon. Gentleman should check the facts. Current expenditure allocated for this financial year for the Scottish ambulance service is £24.8 million, compared with £11.3 million in 1978–79, when the Liberal party was keeping the Labour Government in power. We have expanded the ambulance service, which now employes more than 2,000 men and has over 800 vehicles. I accept that there is still some way to go in some aspects of the service, but a particular problem is the increasing number of patients who wish to be transported to day hospitals.
If there is a special problem in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, I should be delighted if he would write to me or speak to the chairman of the Common Service Agency, Sir Simpson Stevenson.