Scotland

Problem is there is a national (UK and Scotland) shortage of midwives and obstetricians, and small under staff units have been shown time and time again to be dangerous.

So while it's certainly bad that people have to travel 100 miles, it also only part of the story. The alternative is stay local and it be nigh on impossible to safely staff a maternity unit 24/7/365.

Doubtless even now Inverness' services are stretched. But pooling staff on single sites gives a better chance of fully staffing a unit safely.

This is a problem across the whole UK - but is easy to highlight when big geographic areas with low population density means people moving long distances for healthcare.

Brutally the choice is between two evils and choosing the lesser evil. Long distance to travel to services is not good, but two poorly staffed units giving everyone dangerous care versus one better staffed unit giving more consistent and safer care is the choice.

There are ways to mitigate some of the risks of the distance (high risk pregnancy staying in Inverness for example). There ar not ways to mitigate chronic staff shortages in multiple units beyond merge and concentrate.

The real problem is a lack of staff - and that ultimately comes down to money. A lack of money put in to training and more importantly a lack of money for wages to incentivise people into choosing a career that demands night working and weekend working, in a stressful environment where things can go very wrong.

So it's good the LibDems highlight the problem but no politicians are actually solving the problems. We've seen the same with Westminster talk of a 2.6% pay rise for public sector staff (below inflation again). That's not how you encourage people to take up life long careers in antisocial, long hour, high risk jobs.