English Labour is coming for Scotland's NHS
Published in full in the May 11th edition of The Edinburgh Evening News and in The Herald on 13th May.
In the failing UK, the NHS is the last great thing of public value, yet we are watching it bleed to death at government hands. The Tories have made no secret of their desire to privatise the whole thing, but Scots need to wake up to English Labour’s plans. It won’t inject needed cash or undo the disastrous PFI schemes engineered under Blair. Instead, Starmer and Streeting will hand over what remains of a once great public service to for-profit companies. As with any public service privatisation, the public ends up paying more for less. It’s a giant con.
Private agencies are overcharging the English NHS to supply NHS trained doctors and nurses. One agency targets NHS hospitals experiencing nursing shortages and charges nearly £2k per shift for a freelance nurse. It takes a hefty £800 cut. The English NHS paid £3.5 billion for agency staff last year.
Private firms cherry-pick patients who are generally healthy for routine operations like cataracts. If a case becomes complicated, they bounce the patient back to the NHS. This lets them cram in more operations and make more money, leaving the NHS to shoulder the cost.
They also cherry-pick NHS staff because they can offer more money. The NHS doesn’t allow pension contributions if staff take on work beyond their full-time hours, so it loses the simple operations while paying staff less for the more difficult ones.
Wes Streeting vowed to wage war on hospital health unions and rejected nurses’ pay demands. And as in all things, follow the money. The Labour front bench has taken £650k from private health interests, 25% more than the Tories.
English Labour will be under intense pressure to deliver what remains of the NHS to its donors. Scotland’s health service is a prime target. Another excellent reason to end the union.
We have to fight this take-over threat all the way. One of the most important outcomes of devolution was that the Scottish Gov (Labour at that time) allowed the NHS in Scotland to develop the strategies for its governance and everyday functioning. One of the first things they did was to eliminate the Tories' "internal market concept" along with the individual hospital trusts and revert to regional oversight (the Health Boards), with separate, single Acute Care and Primary Care divisions in each region running the NHS's public-facing services.
One of the many benefits of the Scottish model was that, when Covid came along, we had a structure where all types of data were reported using standard Scotland-wide measurements, so our data was consistent and reliable for the whole nation. In England it was very different: the internal market concept meant that individual hospital trusts had more control over data measurement, with the result that the data for England might not be comparable and therefore inaccurate nationwide.
We have to make it clear - to our own people and to UK Gov - that the Scottish NHS model is better across the board and that the role of the Scottish Government in financing (as best it can considering its own finances ultimately reflect public spending in England - UK Gov cutbacks there automatically mean a pro rata reduction in Scotgov finances) the NHS as a whole and public benefits (like free prescriptions) works in the interest of our people much more effectively than the English structure does. It's that old, fundamental truth again: Sovereignty in Scotland lies with the people and is embedded in our law, while in England it lies with the ruling party in Westminster whose "Constitution" is not set in law (it's a set of supposed "conventions") and can be be overturned by a majority government without challenge. 2 irreconcilable concepts: egalitarian Scotland & feudal England.
This should be a major Scotgov component in any independence polling, referenda etc: the only way we can retain our Scottish NHS and all its services and benefits is to vote for Independence. Labour has already sold it, and the English and Welsh NHS too, to its private-interest sponsors. Keeping our NHS could be the deciding factor in our own independent future as everyone living in Scotland relies on it sooner or later. Our Scotgov also pays our NHS staff better wages and so avoids the constant drain of staff churn. But how do we reach the whole Scottish electorate when 95 - 97% of our MSM is controlled by Unionists?
Thanks Leah ! Another demonstration of why Independence is urgent - very urgent…