Back in January the Scottish Daily Mail like so many of the Scottish Media thought it has another SNP bad story to report
- The SNP’s Westminster health spokesman is earning nearly £60 an hour moonlighting as a surgeon.
Dr Philippa Whitford tops up her £74,000 MP’s salary with £500-a-day hospital shifts as a locum consultant.
The revelation flies in the face of leading Nationalist MP Pete Wishart’s pre-election pledge to the House of Commons that ‘no SNP Member has a second job’.
Dr Whitford, elected last May, is moonlighting for NHS Ayrshire and Arran, working five times for the health board last month.
According to her register of interests, she was also paid £1,008 for only 17-and-a-half hours’ work over the summer and during conference season.
Unlike some other politicians with outside earnings, the Central Ayrshire MP did not donate this to charity.
Labour MSP Jackie Baillie said:
‘Pete Wishart already looked foolish as Alex Salmond piled up second and third jobs while serving as an MP and an MSP – now we see yet another SNP MP has a second job.
But it turned out that Dr Whitford need s to keep ocasionally using her skills in order to keep her licence amd she was helping out in a period of shortage of qualified surgeons.
But I wonder if Jackie Baillie will condem Dr Whitford again asit is reported that during her Easter holidays, she worked to save the lives of in Palestinian
Breast cancer surgeon Whitford, the Scottish National Party (SNP) MP for Central Ayrshire, spent her parliamentary break working in Gaza City and Jerusalem.
Just after the First Gulf War and during the First Palestinian Intifada at the age of 30, Whitford served for a year and a half as a medical volunteer in a UN hospital in Gaza
She travelled to the occupied West Bank, with charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), to surgery on four women suffering from breast cancer, and visited the Gaza Strip to advise local hospitals on how to improve health care.
Her trip included a visit to Al-Ahli hospital in the Gaza City, where she volunteered in the 1990s during the first intifada.
Whitford said to Daily Record:
“I met with the charity I work with through being in Parliament. “They arranged the visit and I spent four to five days in Jerusalem and four to five in Gaza.”
“In Jerusalem, I did a clinic, I was operating and I was running lectures and workshops.
“Then in Gaza, we visited clinics and facilities looking at the difficulties breast cancer patients have in accessing what we would consider standard treatments due to the blockade.”She added: “I was doing a lot of teaching in Gaza because the Palestinians do not get out to go to many doctors’ conferences.“I am also producing a report for MAP to consider how they can help women with breast cancer access better treatment in the area.”She added the trip would help inform her future decisions on international issues at Westminster.
I believe it was late liberal MP for Truro MP David Penhaligon who reflecting on the number of Law professionals in Westminster joked that
"They make laws in the morning in the chamber and then get paid to advocate it in the Law cours in the afternoon"
Before you point to Pete Wishart’s pre-election pledge to the House of Commons that ‘no SNP Member has a second job’. If you can't see Dr Whitford as a unique case I am sorry for you.
1 comment:
Ms Whitford has made it clear she intends to go back to being a surgeon. In order to do so she needs to keep up her certification - i.e. do operations.
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