GORDON BROWN: NHS NEEDS INTENSIVE CARE

Scottish Government are presiding over an era of health funding growth that is half that of England, says former PM

A FEW days ago, I attended one of two big hospital appointments I have every 12 months.

After four major operations years ago, NHS staff saved me – restoring my eyesight when rugby injuries to both of my eyes threatened blindness.

But with regular check-ups, the NHS has become a lifesaver, not only for me but for thousands of families.

So it saddens me to see how Scotland’s most precious asset – now 70 years old – is being so badly underfunded.

The NHS takes up 40 per cent of the Scottish Government’s budget. But no one will tell you that the NHS merits 40 per cent of the Scottish Government’s attention.

SNP ministers are more likely to wake up in the morning planning for independence than worrying about our NHS.

And the effects of this are coming into sharp focus – for 10 years the SNP have shortchanged the NHS to the point that every winter, from now on, Scotland is likely to face a staffing and waiting list crisis.

Scottish healthcare spending per person has always had to be higher than in England. With a third of the land area of the UK, we need more resources to staff island and remote practices.

Pensioners who have the greatest healthcare needs are a bigger share of our population than in the UK.

Poor health in the poorest areas of our cities and towns has required more doctors and nurses. That’s why, in 2007 – the year the SNP took power – healthcare spend was 16 per cent higher per head than in England.

But 10 years later, it was only seven per cent more – which is a cut in the real value of what was spent last year of nearly £1billion. This sum would have been available if Scotland had continued to spend 16 per cent more per head than England.

The Scottish Parliament Information Service state that instead of a projected £2516 per person based on 2007 levels, just £2363 per person – about £150 less – was spent last year.

Every day, we see at first-hand the price patients are paying for this underfunding.

In the past 12 months, my home town of Kirkcaldy has lost a 1700-strong GP practice; the local Victoria Hospital is under huge staffing pressures; the Fife out-of-hours service – once available in four centres – has been offered in only one; and because mental health sufferers who have urgent needs are waiting months for an initial appointment, a charity, the Cottage Family Centre, have had to employ their own mental health counsellors.

Tragically, Kirkcaldy’s predicament is not unique.

Statistics, in what the Mental Health Foundation call “a growing child mental health crisis”, show 8000 children in Scotland with severe mental health problems were waiting to see a specialist at the end of June – 2116 of them for more than 18 weeks.

In fact, Scotland is short of 600 consultants and GPs and 3300 nursing and midwifery posts remain unfilled.

The waiting list and the 62-day cancer targets are both now regularly missed.

As Monica Lennon MSP showed this week, 20 per cent of patients waiting for diagnostic tests are not seen within six weeks as promised.

This year, accident and emergency departments have not met their 95 per cent target – the promise of treatment within four hours –despite the fact Scottish hospitals appear to experience less demand for A&E than England.

In the north-east, as a result, it has been reported that social workers are being drafted in to keep casualty departments moving in fear of a winter crisis. It is no doubt one of the reasons why the chairman of the Royal College of GPs in Scotland has added his concerns to those of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and said the NHS is “doomed” in its present form.

During 2018, seven NHS chief executives have left. And after decades, when more people have lived longer, Scotland is now seeing life expectancy – still below the UK average – stall and then, last year, fall.

But what is happening now could be a mere prelude to a greater crisis as demands on the service begin to bite and as the elderly population and the need for equipment and facilities becomes ever more pressing.

The economist John McLaren has estimated the NHS could face an even bigger annual black hole simply because of a sleight of hand by the Scottish Government using highly dubious estimates to justify their underfunding.

Ministers are denying the NHS the money it needs by assuming efficiency savings that, at 1.3 per cent a year, are 50 per cent more than the 0.8 per cent claimed in England.

They then deny the NHS further funding by assuming NHS inflation is going to be 2.3 per cent as against the trend of four per cent, which is also the English assumption. And then ministers deny the NHS even more money by assuming social care spending will rise by four per cent in Scotland while the English forecast is six per cent.

Finally, they claim Scotland’s demographic trends are such that while there will be three per cent growth in demand in England, it will be just one per cent in Scotland.

In all, they are offering the NHS a cash growth half as much as that of England – 3.5 per cent cash growth per year as against seven per cent down south – something McLaren thinks untenable

When I criticised the SNP’s independence plans for the 2020s and 2030s contained in their Growth Commission Report and showing that austerity budgeting allied to a £100billion of debt would lead to big cuts in NHS funding, I was denouncing a blue-sky document that I hoped would never be implemented.

Now I fear the SNP are already implementing their postindependence priorities and the NHS, Labour’s creation, has become a victim of the Scottish Government’s priorities.

With the Budget on December 12, the SNP have an opportunity to undo some of the damage.

The Barnett formula has allowed them to offer the NHS an extra £550million as a result of the UK Budget.

But to bring the NHS up to standard the ex-head of devolution, Professor Jim Gallagher – an expert on the Scottish budget – assesses that if the SNP had given the NHS its fair share of the Barnett formula in their first 10 years, health spending would now be £1billion a year higher.

Even that NHS SOS for £1.5billion now would not be enough to meet Scotland’s rising long-term need.

As chancellor 20 years ago, I set up a review into NHS funding. That review explored NHS future needs – because of new technology, changing demography and rising concern about social care, mental illness and preventive medicine.

We brought in people on a non-partisan basis to help us draw up a plan based on the best use of new investment.

Now we need a similar review into the long-term future of the Scottish NHS and, for the sake of patients and their longsuffering nursing and medical staff, we need it urgently.

Scotland is seeing life expectancy – still below UK average – stall and then fall