Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has set out bold and ambitious plans that will see half of all spending on frontline NHS care go to GPs and community services.

As part of it’s pre-election campaigning, the SNP has stressed how the party has delivered record high spending on health and care services, exceeding over £16 billion, alongside free prescriptions, free personal and nursing care to everyone who needs it and ensuring that Scotland’s A&E services are the best performing in the UK.

Ow, over the next five years, the First Minister declared a re-elected SNP government would go even further, with plans for a full-scale remobilisation of Scotland’s NHS after the coronavirus pandemic.

Sturgeon promised the recruitment of additional 1,500 staff by 2025, dedicated to planned treatments and specialising in procedures like hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and diagnostic services like MRI scans. She also pledged to better utilise mobile operating theatres and to bring on stream under-utilised theatre capacity at community and general hospitals as part of a plan to boost hospital capacity to remobilise the NHS.

The SNP will also expand the NHS’s normal pre-coronavirus ICU capacity from 175 beds to at least 200.

Sturgeon said: “The ambition we are setting out in the remobilisation plan is bold but also achievable – it is a plan to recover from the pandemic, remobilise our NHS and tackle the treatment backlog, and out the NHS on a secure and sustainable footing for the long term.”