Drastic surgery as2017 NHS forced to cut budgets by £333m
Welcome to Holyrood... where when it comes to the Greens and the SNP, reality is never truly objective...
SCOTLAND’s health service will be hit by cuts of more than £300 million in the coming year.
An investigation by The Scottish Mail on Sunday has laid bare the scale of costcutting the NHS will be forced to impose when the new financial year begins in April.
Health boards are planning drastic budget savings in the face of ‘unprecedented’ financial pressures. These will include treating elderly patients in care homes to free up hospital beds and increasing the use of telephone consultations instead of actual appointments.
There are also plans for a crackdown on the spiralling cost of free prescriptions.
We asked all 14 health boards in Scotland how much money would need to be saved to balance their books in 2017-18.
They reported plans for a £333 million cut – although only ten were able to provide figures, meaning the true amount is likely to be higher still.
Scotland’s biggest health board, Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said it would need to cut £106 million in 2017-18.
NHS Lothian must save £76 million, while NHS Highland has a target of £50 million.
NHS Ayrshire and Arran is planning to cut £27 million, NHS Forth Valley £24 million and NHS Dumfries and Galloway £22.6 million.
Smaller boards are also facing cuts – £4 million in NHS Western Isles, £2.3 million in NHS Shetland, and £1.15 million in NHS Orkney.
NHS Grampian did not provide a figure, but said it would be higher than last year’s £27 million.
Scottish Labour health spokesman Anas Sarwar said: ‘Our NHS staff do life-changing and life-saving work, but they are not getting the support they need from the SNP Government, with most health boards facing more brutal cuts in the coming year.
‘We are seeing almost daily reports of hospitals struggling to cope with demand. That’s what happens when the plan for the NHS is built around short-term crisis management rather than the long term. The SNP-Green Budget isn’t giving our NHS the resources it needs, despite all the Nationalist spin.’
Health Secretary Shona Robison said: ‘The NHS budget has increased by £3.7 billion, including planned 2017-18 spending.
‘All boards work to deliver efficiencies to ensure value for public money, with every penny reinvested in frontline health and care services.’
HERE is the news, brought to you with the use of what one of US President Donald Trump’s advisers recently called ‘alternative facts’. Last week, the Scottish Green Party saved public services in Scotland. Under the leadership of Patrick Harvie, the disaster of an SNP Budget that would have slashed council funds was averted and an ‘extra’ £160 million secured to ensure the most vulnerable would be protected. It really was heroic stuff. Without the support of the Greens, Finance Secretary Derek Mackay would have faced the ignominy of being unable to deliver his Budget. The consequences for the SNP would have been grave, indeed. No Budget would have meant a snap election (and, for all its bravado, the SNP doesn’t want one of those).
Having come to the SNP’s aid in the Budget vote on Thursday, Green MSPs and staffers rushed to their smartphones to share on social media the news of their great achievement. They had won the biggest Budget concession in Holyrood’s history.
SNP politicians joined in this celebration of the Greens’ political savvy. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon rejoiced that Glasgow City Council would benefit to the tune of £17 million, while her deputy, John Swinney, was simply thrilled by the prospect of an extra £4.544 million for Perth and Kinross.
But – you knew there was a but coming, didn’t you? – things were not quite as straightforward as the SNP and Greens would have liked us to believe. Let’s now look at the facts. You see, the ‘extra’ cash announced by Mr Mackay after the Greens’ intervention doesn’t even begin to cover the previously announced cutbacks of £360 million. FAR from boldly securing a financial boost for Scotland’s councils, the Greens meekly assisted the SNP in launching swingeing cuts. Sure, the cuts weren’t as deep as projected, but they will be crippling and we should expect local authorities to consider making large council tax increases to try to cover the gaps in the services they provide.
All of Scotland’s 32 councils are facing cuts, with the nationwide average sitting at 2.6 per cent. Should a passing SNP politician attempt to persuade you that these cuts are the inevitable consequence of Westminster ‘austerity’, do bear in mind the Scottish Government’s Budget for the next year has risen by 1.5 per cent in real terms.
The SNP has not been forced to slash funding for the services on which so many of us depend, it has chosen to do so.
It’s not just on the issue of council budgets that the SNP is happy to provide alternative facts. The Scottish Government proclaimed an increase in health service funding but the reality is, as The Scottish Mail on Sunday reports today, NHS boards will have to save £330 million in the weeks ahead.
It is the Scottish Government’s frequently-stated position that it acts at all times to protect Scotland from decisions made at Westminster. The SNP’s cartoonish version of reality sees a malevolent UK Government making decisions intended to harm Scotland. The plucky Nationalists are Scotland’s great defenders against this evil. This infantile analysis bears no resemblance to reality.
One might ask why it was that, if the Scottish Government is in the business of protecting services, this ‘extra’ £160 million for councils wasn’t in Mr Mackay’s Budget before the Greens got involved. The Finance Secretary didn’t find this money down the back of the sofa. It was always available to him.
The heavily spun Budget agreement between the SNP and the Greens begins to look awfully like a sham, doesn’t it?
But we should not be surprised that the Greens were willing to play along with this nonsense. Leader Patrick Harvie has slowly morphed from being one of Holyrood’s most interesting, most bloody-minded MSPs to becoming little more than a cheerleader for the SNP.
In an interview last year, Mr Harvie made clear his subservience to the Scottish Government. He explained there were no circumstances under which his party wouldn’t support a second referendum Bill.
The SNP could propose an independent Scotland where fracking and cut-price air duty was the norm and it appears the great environmentalist Mr Harvie would gladly try to help.
Week after week at First Minister’s Questions, Mr Harvie pulls his punches, frequently preferring to hold the Westminster Government to account rather than asking difficult questions of the SNP.
THE day after the six Green MSPs supported the SNP’s service-slashing budget, Mr Harvie wrote that now Holyrood could ‘start to repair the damage done by years of underfunding’.
This was the most incredible doublespeak. It’s true the SNP has put local services under ever greater pressure, year after year, but how this trend might be reversed with a Budget that means more cuts is a mystery.
The Scottish Greens have shamelessly dressed up support for a Budget that stands to harm schools, social work departments and libraries as a position of courageous principle. Rather pompously, Mr Harvie said there were lessons to be learned by other parties which had ‘disengaged from the Budget process early on’.
Those ‘other parties’ – the Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats – are, of course, on the other side of the constitutional arguments from Mr Harvie and his de facto political leader, Nicola Sturgeon.
Curiously, although those three parties share common ground on the question of whether Scotland should be independent, they are able to hold a variety of different positions when it comes to how the Scottish Government should spend taxpayers’ money. How quaint – different political parties holding different views. There’s no place for this sort of thing for the SNP and the Greens; independence is the only principle worth holding dear. All other political positions may be reversed or ignored.
The First Minister is obsessed with the prospect of a second divisive referendum.
It matters not a jot to Miss Sturgeon that polls continue to show the public remains opposed to a referendum. Nor, it’s clear, is she concerned that constant talk of constitutional upheaval creates damaging uncertainty among the businesses that keep our economy afloat.
Mr Harvie shares this zealotry. His support for an SNP Budget that will mean debilitating cuts to vital services was not an act of principle. It was a display of the utmost cynicism.
Heavily spun Budget deal begins to look like a sham