Meeting of the Parliament 04 June 2024
The Scottish Government, in choosing to invest more than £19.5 billion in health and social care in 2024-25, is giving our NHS a real-terms uplift in the face of UK Government austerity. I understand that NHS funding comprises almost 40 per cent of the Government’s budget. It has more than doubled under the present Government, and staffing is at a record high, as colleagues have said, with far more doctors and nurses per head in Scotland than in England. By working with the trade unions, the Government prevented a single day of strike action over pay in our health service, unlike elsewhere in the UK. We all know that Scotland has an increasing ageing population and, therefore, increasing demands on health and social care, and the fallout from Covid continues to add pressure to NHS services.
I now turn to the financial context, which Sandesh Gulhane and Jackie Baillie conveniently sidestepped. There is a perfect financial storm, which started with austerity under the Tories, following the 2008 bank crash, and continues to this day. There was Covid; Brexit, with its costs; the raging inflation, which peaked at 11 per cent, that was brought about by the disastrous Liz Truss budget, and the natural wage demands that followed as a consequence; and the energy inflation that resulted from Ukraine’s invasion by Russia, which was compounded by a failure of UK Governments to invest in home-grown energy over decades, having squandered North Sea oil revenues, unlike independent Norway.
Before we tackle reform, let us lay to rest some myths. A good place to start is to follow the money. If any UK Government makes public sector cuts, because of Barnett consequentials, we suffer, too. That is significant when I refer to Labour’s plans, should it come to power. For example, if more health is delivered through the private sector, public funding decreases in England, so funding that is devolved to Scotland decreases when the Scottish Government is determined to keep the NHS in public hands.