A new National Care Service

UK and USA, planned to come into force in January 2021, are still ongoing at the same time as the post-brexit negotiations with the EU that are tottering along.

A new report implies the American team want the Food Standards/ labelling to reflect their standards, rather than EU/UK. Chlorinated chicken; hormone beef and pork fed with ractopamine.

If we in the UK and Scotland are forced to accept these changes, our farming communities will be devastated, as the power of the huge factory farms in the US will be able to flood the market, and the pressure will be applied to the Hill Sheep and Aberdeen-angus herds.

A comment attributed to one of the UK negotiating team implies that the UK will take the ‘US to the cleaners’.

Another commentator suggests the UK are in ‘fantasy mode’ and the US will get everything they want while the UK gets nothing they want.

This US trade negotiation was supposed to be the stick the UK beat the EU with to get a better EU/UK post-brexit trade deal. Not going too well then.

I do feel for the farming community, particularly in the northeast, as they will suffer hugely.

Not only the farm owners, but the farm employees.

Alistair Ballantyne. Birkhill,

Angus.

Sir, – It is inevitable there will be an inquiry into the transfer of people from hospitals to care homes, but the investigation needs to start well before the outbreak of coronavirus.

The recent demand for beds to be cleared so the NHS could cope with the expected influx of patients was accompanied by a ‘money is no object’ offer.

Almost unknown in living memory, the higher prices charged by some private care homes were suddenly not a problem; facilities local authorities could usually not afford were used if they had capacity.

What a pity some of this money was not available earlier.

Not just because the cash-strapped NHS would have been in a far better position to cope, but bed blocking would not have been such an issue.

Bed blocking has been a problem for years, the SNP government have tried to integrate health and social care, but they have systematically cut local authority funding, and integration has not happened.

The funding cuts have had an impact on local authority care packages, which have been delayed, while the cash restraint has meant carers on short contracts with low pay, many care home vacancies, underpaid and undervalued staff and no career progression.

Funding cuts from the SNP government led to bed blocking, which has led to rushed transfers to care homes, quite possibly resulting in excess deaths.

Whatever comes out of the inevitable review, we need a National Care Service, to work alongside the NHS, paid for out of general taxation.

Phil Tate. 95 Craiglockhart Road, Edinburgh.

Eric Gibbons.

112 Coldingham Place, Dunfermline.