Winning the war against waiting needs a sustained programme of investment and reform at both a local and national level

Malcolm Chisholm Health Minister

The National Waiting Times Unit was created to make full use of the resources of the NHS.

Patients waiting for treatment in busy hospital trusts are now offered operations in quieter ones, or in the private sector.

The unit has managed an additional 2,100 cases from spare NHS capacity and purchased an estimated 2,000 operations from the private sector on behalf of the NHS.

Unnecessary delays

The Scottish Executive said early figures suggested this had cut the number of patients waiting for more than six months for treatment by 34% in Argyll & Clyde and 31% in Lanarkshire.

Waiting times in Forth Valley, Tayside and North Glasgow are down by about 20%.

Health minister Malcolm Chisholm said that national investment to tackle waiting times was now "more co-ordinated, more focussed and more closely linked to reform than ever before".

Nicola Sturgeon: "Thousands dumped"

Mr Chisholm said: "Top of the executive's priorities in improving the patient's experience of the NHS is reducing unnecessary delays in the system and reducing the time patients spend on waiting lists.

"Winning the war against waiting needs a sustained programme of investment and reform at both a local and national level."

However, the SNP said that the executive had "fiddled" the waiting list figures too often in the past for the current claims to be believed.

'Fiddling the figures'

Health spokeswoman Nicola Sturgeon said: "Only a couple of months ago in the chamber the SNP revealed that the executive had been fiddling the figures through closing waiting lists therefore denying patients the right to even get on the list.

"In addition the executive has continued to dump thousands of people onto deferred waiting lists and has reclassified many more patients in a blatant attempt to reduce the figures.

"I will therefore be reserving judgement until the full figures are published later this month."