English Labour's Scottish candidates refuse to sign anti-privatisation pledge
Scotland's health service is in danger from English Labour
Published in the July 10th edition of The National.
Back in May, I wrote that English Labour is coming for Scotland’s health service. The evidence that I was right keeps mounting.
We Own It, an organisation that campaigns for bringing former public services that were privatised by the Tories and English Labour back into public control, asked all Scottish candidates to commit to increasing NHS funding by £3.9 billion per year, oppose further privatisation and bring outsourced services back into the NHS. Not a single ‘Scottish’ Labour candidate signed the pledge under orders from their English bosses. Not even Viceroy-in-waiting Ian Murray could bring himself to sign the pledge.
Since 2012, £6.7 billion or £10 million per week has left the NHS budget as private company profits from outsourcing contracts for services that the NHS can and does already deliver in many places. The figure for Scotland is £374.3 million.
We Own It said ending NHS privatisation could more than triple English Labour’s plan to deliver 40k more GP appointments per week, 700k new dental appointments each year and double NHS diagnostic capacity.
Surprisingly, just 40% of SNP candidates have signed the pledge, another sign that the SNP, as a colonial administration, isn’t representing the majority of Scots who strongly oppose selling off their health service.
Outsourcing a nation’s health to private companies for profit is a stupid idea. A recent study by Oxford University found that outsourcing leads to worse patient outcomes. The BMJ’s Commission on the Future of the NHS revealed that outsourcing NHS catering harmed patients. And peer-reviewed research found that hospitals cleaned by private companies are dirtier and spread more hospital-acquired infections such as the deadly MRSA than those cleaned by in-house NHS staff.
Scots need to listen to what English Labour has been telling them. The Scottish health service won’t be safe in their hands. Our so-called Scottish Labour representatives won’t dare cross Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer as they sell off the remainder of the UK’s last great public service to satisfy their private healthcare donors.
Rabbie Burns must have been able to see into the future. LabCons branch office operating in Scotland, really are a 'parcel of rogues' aren't they.
Spot-on again Leah. One of the most egregious examples of privatised public heath is the USA, where their National Institute of Health estimates that 20% of all adults and 15% of all children are uninsured. But the ever-increasing costs of medicines and treatment have resulted in many insurance companies capping payouts to claimants and in some cases excluding certain medical conditions. The result has been that some people find out the hard way that they aren't covered although they've been paying for it. There's also clear evidence on a per capita basis that combined costs (public and private) are significantly lower in UK's NHS than in the US System.
A number of years ago a specific case caught all the headlines: a Scottish-born and -educated surgeon was leaving the hospital in California (if memory serves me) where he worked, when someone staggered into the lobby with a knife sticking out of his body. Hospital security would not admit the victim because he couldn't prove he could pay for treatment and were trying to dump him back onto the street. The surgeon intervened and said he personally would pay for it and carry out all the necessary procedures. He went back up to theatre, rounded up nurses etc to help, removed the knife and carried out all the procedures to make the patient safe. Once that was done and he was sure the patient would be properly looked after, he went back to Reception and wrote a resignation letter. His reason was that he no longer wanted to live in a country where profit came before human life. Once the patient was successfully treated and released, and once the surgeon had completed his contract, he returned to Scotland and worked in the NHS in the Glasgow area.
We must not permit our NHS to be sold off, like so many of our other public assets, for private profit. Once dismantled, it could never be reinstated. Privatised medical companies have financed Tory and Labour MPs as well as the parties themselves with very substantial funding for many years. In their eyes they've already bought the NHS. We mustn't let them complete the purchase and most importantly, we have to make our views very public and very clear; by taking to the streets if necessary.