Davidson: NHS before tax cuts

FUNDING the NHS should be a higher priority than tax breaks, the leader of the Scottish Tories has argued.

Ruth Davidson said the health service needed ‘substantial’ extra cash across the UK as the country faced an increasingly elderly population.

Answering the question of where the money should come from, she said ministers should not introduce any more tax cuts ‘beyond those already promised’. Miss Davidson told an audience at Glasgow University: ‘The UK Government has a choice to make.

‘And, if that choice is between extra spending on the NHS or introducing further tax breaks beyond those already promised, I choose the NHS.’ She added: ‘Either way, we should have the honesty to recognise that this is a moment where we as a country have to choose one way or the other.’

The Tory MSP, who is expecting her first child with fiancee Jen Wilson, said the NHS is ‘pretty personal for me’. The politician said her sister is an NHS doctor, and revealed how medics saved her life aged five when she was run over by a truck outside her home.

But SNP MSP Gillian Martin said Miss Davidson had only recently demanded ‘tax cuts for the rich that would have cost the health service in Scotland £550million’.