In the above, endorsed by Con MSPs Annie Wells and Sandesh Gulhane, there is the claim that:

Many hundreds are having to travel hundreds of miles for life-saving procedures in England as sit on lengthy waiting lists North of the Border.

Here are some facts about cancer care in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK:

The differences are greater now.

The BBC have been careful to include NHS England’s improvement in March 2023, to 64% starting treatment within the target 64 days, from only 54.4% in December 2022, but have then compared that with the NHS Scotland figure for December 2022.

The correct, fair comparison would be 72% with 54.4%, a 16.6% gap and thus 30.5% better than the 54.4% figure.

Note that the Daily Express (?) story does not offer the above evidence nor does it, carefully, say ‘NHS England.’

So some Scots are travelling to the larger number of private hospitals in England to accelerate their cancer treatment.

I would not dream of criticising. It must be horribly scary. I’d probably try to do the same myself, but given the far superior performance in NHS Scotland, will these not be cases where the consultant feels they can wait a bit longer without being at risk of dying?

Meanwhile in England, run by the real bosses of Wells and Gulhane:

Many cancer waiting time targets set to be dropped in England: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66494983