Health Secretary Angela Constance has refused to stake her job on meeting a target to reduce year-long waits.
In his first programme for government (PFG) since May’s election, First Minister John Swinney announced plans to end waits for treatment of more than six months by the end of 2031.
The target comes just months after the Government failed to end year-long waits for treatment by the end of March, as it had aimed.
Despite the inability to hit the target, Ms Constance said the First Minister was right to make the pledge in the first place, but she refused twice to stake her job on hitting the new goal.
Asked if she would resign if the target was missed, Ms Constance said: “What I would say is, as a senior politician, as a member of the cabinet, you’re never in charge of your own destiny, (you are) appointed on the good grace of the First Minister.
“Of course, Parliament can have a view around the performance of any minister and then, of course, there’s the electorate.
“I don’t mean for this to sound in any way glib or shallow, but I’m not focused on my career.
“I’m in my mid-50s – a wee bit more than my mid-50s – I’m all about getting the job done, getting the work done.
“I’m too old to be fooling around, my focus is not on my career it’s about the work and, crucially, delivering and delivering on the job that the First Minister has appointed me to do and delivering for the people of Scotland.”
Asked if Mr Swinney was wrong to pledge to eradicate year-long waits, the Health Secretary said: “No, because we don’t want people to be waiting lengthy periods before they get the treatment that they need.
“So he wasn’t wrong by any shape or shadow of means.”
We need to simplify the accountability processes - people have to be accountable, accountable for their actions and accountable for public money
The First Minister earlier this month also came with a plan to cut back the number of territorial health boards from 14 to just two in a wider, Government-wide drive towards reforming and streamlining public services.
If the NHS was to be created from scratch now, the Health Secretary said, the current structures would not be in place.
“What we have to be focused on now is actually putting people at the centre and the public service reforms that have been announced are actually about stripping away boundaries, bureaucracy and the recognition that given the rise in demand that we continue to face, we need to simplify the decision-making processes,” she said.
“We need to simplify the accountability processes – people have to be accountable, accountable for their actions and accountable for public money.
“But let’s be honest, if we were starting from scratch with a blank sheet of paper, we would not design the system as it is today, with 84 accountable officers across the health and social care system.
“What we are now hearing is that decision-making process and those governance processes and those financial processes, they need to be much simpler so that we can support people to get the right care at the right time and actually in the right place.