Professor John Robertson OBA

I’ve already recommended the excellent, highly researched, ‘Social Murder? Austerity and Life Expectancy in the UK’ by David Walsh and Gerry McCartney (U of Glasgow), Policy Press.

In the opening pages, they justify the term ‘social murder‘ for the fatal consequences of economic violence against the disabled and the poor.

They estimate the level of social murder by comparing the observed mortality rates in the UK from 2012-2019 with the rate that should have emerged in those years if the prior improving trend in life expectancy had continued, uninterrupted as it did in other parts of Europe not subjected to austerity policies.

On page 14, they note that across the UK (not including N Ireland), 335 000 more died than would have been expected if the improving trends had continued and that this included 20 000 extra deaths in Scotland, leaving 315 000 for England and Wales.

Regulars and other with my kind of brain will know what’s coming.

All things being equal, pro rata, per head, you might have expected the Scottish figure to be much higher, one eleventh of the 315 000 or 28 636.

28 636 is 43% higher than expected had Scotland experienced austerity to the same extent.

The authors do not comment on this and while they do, to be fair, refer in places to the Scottish Government’s mitigation of UK austerity, they are less than complete.

Might these SNP policies explain Scotland’s significantly lower extra death rate in this period?

1. Free prescriptions for all
2. Lower rents and council tax
3. More affordable housing
4. Better NHS all round
5. More GPs per head
6. More nurses per head
7. Better A&E performance
8. Cleaner hospitals
9. Better Covid response strategy
10. Lower Covid death rate
11. Earlier vaccination in care homes
12. Better developed health and social care integration
13. Plummeting crime