Scots ‘have better quality of life than the English’
Brussels bureaucrats claim they’re more tolerant and their schools are superior!
THE Scots enjoy a better quality of life than the English, EU officials claimed yesterday.
Brussels said Scotland was more tolerant of minorities and had a better education system and environment, while people living in England had fewer personal freedoms.
However, the league table of the social progress of 272 EU regions also showed that life expectancy in Scotland was much lower than in England, and the Scots had the worst ratings for personal safety of anywhere in the UK, and the lowest score for ‘nutrition and basic medi- cal care’. Published more than three months after the Brexit referendum, the European Commission’s report is meant to give European leaders ‘a roadmap that can be used to navigate the pressures and opportunities facing Europe’. Its researchers used EU regional statistics to assess ‘measures of health, safety, and access to education and personal rights’, and found ‘England trails behind both Scotland and Northern Ireland, beating only Wales among the home nations’.
The report, which was funded by a US charity, the Social Progress Imperative, and is the first of its kind, gave England an overall quality-of-life score of 72.68 out of 100, compared with 73.18 for Northern Ireland and 74.01 for Scotland. Wales scored 72.04.
It said the best quality of life in Europe was to be found in Finland, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, while the worst was in Romania and Bulgaria.
The authors said that when the English and the Scots are assessed on their ‘tolerance towards minorities and homosexuals, attitudes towards people with disabilities and the extent of the gender gap, Scotland comes out on top’. It rated education in Scotland as better than in England, giving Scotland higher scores for the number of students in higher education, the likelihood of people continuing to learn after finishing formal schooling, and on school enrolment rates.
Scotland also gained higher scores for opportunity, access to basic knowledge, and health and wellness, despite its poor life-expectancy levels. Environmental quality – including air pollution levels and the protection of natural habitats – and personal freedom and choice were also rated better in Scotland. However, the report acknowledged that in some areas the English had the upper hand, adding: ‘On access to communications, which looks at things like whether people have home internet and broadband, England fares better than Scotland.’
It also accepted that Scotland performed badly on measures of personal safety, which includes road deaths.
Within England, London only gained average results for social progress, according to the report.
It ranked inner London as 22nd out of 37 UK regions, and 81st among the 272 regions in the EU.
‘Scotland comes out on top’
Michael Green, of the Social Progress Imperative, said: ‘Perhaps the most surprising finding is that the Brexit narrative of a divided United Kingdom, split between the privileged London bubble and more deprived regions, is not evident in terms of quality of life. Wealth in Cornwall and west Wales may be much lower but their social progress is on a par with inner London.’
The index was compiled so the EU could use measures of wellbeing alongside economic statistics.
British official statistics began to include such measures in 2011 after David Cameron said it was necessary to base policies on research that went deeper than traditional economic figures.