By stewartb

What the Scottish Ambulance Service is achieving and what its Welsh peer is achieving with the ‘benefit’ of a Labour government in Cardiff.

Scottish Ambulance Service (April 29) – Unscheduled Care Operational Statistics – Unscheduled Care Incidents between 30 March 2026 to 26 April 2026

In the past week, the median and 90th percentile response times (- the point at which 90% of responses were quicker and 10% were slower) were:

‘Purple incidents – Median: 6 minutes 22 seconds; 90th Percentile: 15 minutes 59 seconds‘

‘Red incidents – Median: 8 minutes 58 seconds; 90th Percentile: 19 minutes 43 seconds.

Welsh Government (April 23): NHS activity and performance summary: February and March 2026 – Report summarising data on activity and performance in the Welsh NHS for February and March 2026.

‘The median response time for purple calls was 7 minutes 37 seconds, longer than in February. The 90th percentile .. was 16 minutes 57 seconds, longer than in February. The response time targets for purple calls were met.’

‘For red calls, the median increased to 9 minutes 25 seconds and the 90th percentile also increased to 22 minutes 23 seconds. This means the response time targets for red calls were not met.’

Just a snapshot comparison but indicative: Scotland’s service performed a bit better. As with much of NHS performance, there is ZERO sense that the British Labour Party, governing with just devolved powers for decades in Cardiff, has the means, the solutions to significantly improve the performance of the NHS in Wales. And given this, why should we believe Labour in Scotland? Indeed, (even) Labour in government in Westminster – with relatively UNLIMITED powers – has clearly been struggling to make substantial improvements to NHS England’s performance.