Shameful record on health shows how SNP is all talk
THE biggest lie in Scottish politics is that the SNP is competent in government. The separatists rose to power repeating the mantra that only they could be trusted to provide stable government. And, over the past 13 years, they have shamelessly promoted the line that they are uniquely competent, even when all the evidence proves the opposite.
The truth is that the Scottish Nationalists have shown themselves to be disastrously bad at the business of government. Their obsession with breaking up the United Kingdom trumps everything else, meaning that their approach to other policies is at best half-hearted and at worst downright neglectful.
Rather than take on big, complex problems, the SNP reaches for the megaphone and shouts that independence is the solution.
And when they are caught failing, they point the finger at Westminster and blame the United Kingdom. It is, we’re bound to say, a pitiful way to run a government.
On taking power at Holyrood in 2007, the Nationalists pledged to make real, meaningful reform in key areas such as education and health. But that was all talk. In practice, the Nationalist government has been timid, unimaginative and frequently hopelessly out of its depth.
Take education, for example, the issue on which First Minister Nicola Sturgeon claims she wishes to be judged. For all the SNP’s grand talk about ‘closing the attainment gap’, standards in Scottish schools are troublingly bad. Far too many young people leave school with shockingly low levels of literacy and numeracy.
And if there is any narrowing of that gap between pupils from different backgrounds, it’s because of levelling down rather than up.
Today, The Mail on Sunday reveals the extent of Nationalist failings when it comes to the nation’s health. Under what passes for the leadership of the SNP, Scotland has suffered from growing health problems and low life expectancy over the past decade.
This damning indictment of the Nationalist government comes not from the SNP’s opponents but from a body set up by Ministers.
Public Health Scotland was established five months ago as part of a drive to tackle the country’s major health problems.
The organisation’s first report is utterly humiliating for the SNP. It highlights ‘worsening health inequalities’ over the past ten years, with hundreds of thousands of Scots in the most deprived parts of the country failing to receive the same level of healthcare as those living in wealthier areas.
As if this were not bad enough, it warns that life expectancy in Scotland – already among the lowest in Europe – has not improved over the past decade.
It is customary for the SNP to blame Westminster for what ills befall Scotland but there can be no pointing of the Nationalist finger in this instance. The SNP has been in sole charge of the Scottish NHS since 2007. The blame lies with all of those – including First Minister Nicola Sturgeon – who have served as Health Secretary.
Back in 2008, Ms Sturgeon said tackling heath inequality was the SNP Government’s top priority. If this were truly the case, then how, we wonder, does the First Minister explain her party’s abject failure to make improvements?
The truth is, of course, that senior SNP politicians care about nothing so much as they care about breaking up the United Kingdom. Whether it’s health or education or criminal justice, these issues remain secondary to the constitutional obsession.
Doubtless, the SNP will continue to talk up their commitment to higher standards in health and education but talk, as Nicola Sturgeon’s record clearly shows, is very cheap indeed.