First of three pieces from Leah Gunn Barrett
This was published in the December 19th edition of the Edinburgh Evening News. An English Labour government is the last thing Scotland needs.
English Labour’s shadow health spokesperson, Wes Streeting, said spending more on health comes at the expense of “other worthy causes” and that “under Labour you can have a well-funded NHS or you can lift kids out of poverty, but you can’t have both.”[1]
That’s a false choice. It implies that governments are limited in what they can spend to help their people. Taxpayers don’t fund the NHS, the government does. It CAN turn on the taps because it owns a central bank. As John Maynard Keynes said, “anything we can actually do, we can afford.”[2]
Second, not prioritising a nation’s health is foolish. For every pound a government spends on healthcare, £4 of economic activity is generated. Healthy people can work, employ others, buy goods and services and pay taxes.[3] It’s called the health multiplier. An unhealthy population can’t work, so unemployment and child poverty increase.
Third, Labour is partly responsible for the NHS crisis. Tony Blair expanded private finance initiatives (PFIs), an unnecessary and costly way to fund new hospitals. PFIs deliver risk-free returns for private investors but drain money from the NHS, pile up long-term debt, forcing the NHS to sell assets and close hospitals. Labour introduced private medical services to the NHS which increased costs and brought in Payment by Results, that helped private companies cherry-pick the easiest, most profitable treatments.[4] And it allowed NHS Trusts to become Foundation Trusts, arms-length businesses outside government control, that further entrenched commercial interests into the system.
Fourth, follow the money. English Labour politicians are increasingly funded by private health companies, which explains their enthusiasm for selling off the NHS. Ian Murray is the only MP in Scotland to have accepted private insurance money.[5]
To save its NHS, Scotland must end this failing union.
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Very valid points well made by Leah. If, as I presume to be the case, the numbers against each point relate to a contextual report, it would be good if the links were also appended
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Well said Leah, the most scurrilous lie of all, the ‘household budget’…
Labour grandees must be spinning in their graves over Streeting et al – You only need look at the that the origins of the NHS under Attlee a year after WW2, with a country up beyond it’s neck in debt, suffering rotating power cuts, rationing, a country surviving on allotments and the still active land army helping get food out to the masses, but they were determined not to be beaten …
The only talk of a ‘Can’t afford it” fairy came from the Tories, but they soon quietened down faced with thousands of battle weary troops returning to “a land fit for heroes”…
And that’s the UK’s problem in a nutshell – There’s nobody fighting for the little guy any more, least of all from Labour’s government in waiting…
Were a new left leaning party to dodge the mines and enter the political arena in England’s hegemonic politics, they would wipe the floor with both Labour and Tory, such is the despise for what they’ve both become…. Con-artists and Asset strippers to man…
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100%COREECT
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