Rulers’ eyes off the ball as NHS faces oblivion

Scottish and UK governments are both failing to deliver the National Health Service that citizens deserve

The Institute for Fiscal Studies’ view that the Scottish Government is misleading voters by saying NHS funding is set to rise, when it will actually fall, is a shocking charge that should have political repercussions for the SNP.

The IFS said that, under the Scottish Budget’s proposals, health service spending in Scotland could fall by 0.7 per cent in real terms from this year to next, despite ministers’ claims it will rise by 1.3 per cent. The reason for the discrepancy, the think tank said, was that the official figures for this year did notincludefunding“top-ups”.

The SNP and its more unquestioning supporters will doubtless attempt to defend their use of statistics, but what the public wants to know is whether the NHS is going to improve or whether shocking waiting lists for vital treatment will get even longer. If its funding is reducing, then the current crisis looks likely to get worse.

In the latest sign of just how bad the situation has become, the British Heart Foundation said that the number of people on cardiology waiting lists in Scotland had hit a record high, with fewer than half of patients seeing a cardiologist within 12 weeks. The foundation’s Jonathan Roden said that deaths from heart disease had been falling in Scotland for 60 years but “worryingly, that trend has reversed”. Coronary heart disease is Scotland's biggest killer.

Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak has admitted he has failed to meet one of his “five priorities” – cutting NHS waiting lists in England, where some 7.6 million people are waiting for non-emergency care. Both Scotland’s governments, the SNP and the Conservatives, talk about improving the health service while its problems become ever-more acute.

Lives are being lost. People are dying on waiting lists. Does either party really care? The lack of progress and the high profiles of Sunak’s “stop the boats” campaign and the SNP’S endless independence papers suggest their eyes are firmly “off the ball”, as Nicola Sturgeon once admitted, shockingly, about drug deaths. If this unofficial policy of spin and no substance continues, our life-saving National Health Service, a towering legacy of politicians past, will be lost.