Westminster rescues Scottish NHS with £65m cash injection
SCOTLAND’S ca s hstrapped health service is to receive a £65million boost through a Westminster windfall.
SNP ministers will make the announcement today as they face increasing pressure i n hospitals f ollowing a winter beds crisis.
The move comes after a l eaked dossier published shortly before the independence referendum showed that health chiefs were facing a r e duction in day- t o - day spending of £ 210million in 2015-16, rising to £224million in 2016-17.
The respected Institute for Fiscal Studies also recently published evidence which claimed that the NHS budget in England had increased in each of t he past t hree years when compared to a 2009-10 baseline, but had fallen or increased at a slower pace in Scotland.
The £65million injection is part of a £125million windfall f or Scotland through the Barnett Formula – which the SNP wants to scrap under Alex Salmond’s vision for ‘ home rule’ – after a decision to spend more on the NHS south of the Border.
Health Secretary Shona Robison claimed: ‘This Government has not only protected the NHS budget, but increased it.
‘Our NHS services face challenges as a result of the increase in patients, with more complex illnesses, and the rising costs of expensive new drugs.
‘This £65million additional i nvestment i ncreases t he resources available to health boards will help alleviate these pressures and ensure our NHS can continue to deliver effective and sustainable care to all patients across Scotland.’
Miss Robison added: ‘ We’re clear that all patients in Scotl and should be treated as quickly and as effectively as possible, with the right care, in the right place, at the right time. With this increase in funding, health boards are being given more support to achieve this.
‘ Despite Scotland’s fiscal resource budget being slashed in real terms by 10 per cent by Westminster since 2010, we have i ncreased the health resource budget by 4.6 per cent in real terms.’
But Scottish Labour deputy leader Kezia Dugdale accused the SNP of reannouncing a funding pledge.
She said: ‘On the two biggest issues in Scottish politics today – the problems facing our NHS and the crisis in the oil industry – the SNP government in Edinburgh have offered Scots no solutions.
‘When Scots need their Government to take urgent action, it seems that ministers are still on their holidays. But instead of taking action, they have resorted to panicked attempts at spin about our NHS.
Miss Dugdale added: ‘ The SNP are saying one thing and the experts another. It is a Government more concerned with how they look than what they are doing.
‘Scottish Labour has set out what we would do to improve our NHS and support the thousands of oil industry workers whose jobs are at risk.’
With fears of a looming care crisis taking hold in Scotland, ‘extreme pressure’ on the NHS was blamed for a series of events that saw operations postponed and patients left waiting for more than 12 hours in some accident and emergency departments.
On Friday, hospitals in the Glasgow area were 96 per cent full.