ANAS Sarwar has suffered another setback in his troubled bid for the Scottish Labour leadership after it emerged that the expert appointed to chair his party's NHS “commission” had quit. Dr Miles Mack was unveiled by Sarwar as a prized member of the body, but he withdrew because he is the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners in Scotland, which is a charity.
His role at the RCGPS created a potential conflict with serving on a commission set up by a political party.
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Sarwar, who has been criticised in the contest on education, low pay and trade unions, has gone big on the health service, which is also his portfolio in the shadow cabinet. At the Glasgow hustings last week, he said: “For Nicola Sturgeon the three most important letters will always be S, N, P. But for me, and the Labour Party under my leadership, the three most important letters will always be N, H, S.”
“The NHS is Labour’s greatest achievement. My first job was in the NHS and my first job as First Minister will be to fix our NHS.”
In the summer, he announced the membership of a Health and Social Care Workforce Commission to look at staffing shortages. At the time, Sarwar said he was delighted to have attracted a range of “widely respected and experienced individuals” who “know our NHS so well”.
He added: “They include Dr Miles Mack, who has kindly agreed to chair the commission. As the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGPs), he brings with him a particular expertise on primary care.
“He will take up the role while remaining independent of the Labour Party and politically neutral.”
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Sarwar’s leadership campaign blog returned to the same subject this month: “Anas has already established an expert-led workforce commission to address the challenges.”
However, he failed to mention that Dr Mack had walked away from the commission. Sarwar said yesterday: “It was right and proper that commissioners were the first to be informed of Dr Mack's decision to withdraw, and that happened earlier this month. We look forward to inviting Dr Mack to give evidence to the commission."
Dr Mack said: "Scottish Labour’s Health and Social Care Workforce Commission plans to carry out important work towards an evidence based appraisal of need within Scotland. As a professional without political affiliation, I would have been keen to aid any such undertaking. It is unfortunate that my role within the college made my participation impossible."
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An SNP spokesperson said: “As we are learning from this increasingly acrimonious Labour leadership debate, the candidates are very good at making platitudinous statements, but the reality does not always match the rhetoric.
“We’ll always listen to constructive ideas about how we can support our hardworking NHS staff, but the reality is that Labour have zero credibility on health policy."
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