Professor John Robertson OBA

From BBC Wales yesterday, the above and this astonishing news:

NHS patients from Wales who need knee and hip operations in England face lengthy delays after a health board asked English hospitals to copy Wales’ longer waiting times. Powys health board announced the change as it could not afford the cost of how quickly operations over the border were being carried out, but patients have said they were not informed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp89337gm7ro

With NHS England and NHS Wales both now in the clutches of Starmerite thinking, you see how things will go for them both. Lisa Summers is scrabbling around, as I write, for the same meanness in NHS Scotland. Judging by history, she’ll struggle. See these:

From BBC Wales in February 2025:

From BBC Wales yesterday:

A woman who was diagnosed with anorexia at 19 had to travel as far away as Glasgow to receive intensive treatment. Molly Leonard from Rhoose, Vale of Glamorgan, is now 26 and in recovery but believes she would not “have struggled for so long” if adequate treatment was available in her community.

“You’re just stripped away from everything. It’s so hard when you’re so far away from anything normal, to suddenly being in a strange place where you don’t have any of your belongings, and sometimes you just need your mum,” Molly said. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2ryr3w73po

In the previous month in the Guardian:

Some English patients with eating disorders sent to Scotland for treatment – NHS England data shows 84 patients were sent hospitals in Scotland in 2020-23 due to lack of beds near their homes.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/12/england-patients-with-eating-disorders-sent-hundreds-of-miles-for-treatment?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

In the Independent on April 2nd 2025:

Enhertu is the first licensed targeted treatment for patients with HER2-low breast cancer that cannot be removed surgically or that has spread to other parts of the body. Patients are usually offered chemotherapy, but Breast Cancer Now explains the targeted drug could offer people more time to live in comparison. Enhertu was approved for use in Scotland in December 2023 but was rejected for use on NHS England in March 2024 by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice) because it was too expensive.

In September 2023, 84 patients had to travel north: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/breast-cancer-nhs-enhurtu-scotland-b2724618.html

Back in 2021 during the pandemic:

In the Record, we read:

English families are being asked to travel to Scotland to get a PCR test as shortages continue to hit the country amid a spike in coronavirus cases. One woman from Kirklees in West Yorkshire, who asked not to be named, told Yorkshire Live about her own fears and said:

“My family are currently trying to get PCR tests as (we) have covid symptoms and the nearest place to get a PCR test is in Scotland. Yorkshire Live also tried to access a PCR test and were also told Scotland was the nearest place to get them. https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/people-being-forced-travel-scotland-25814964

BBC Scotland did not covering this story.

In January 2021, they missed this too:

Coronavirus patients needing urgent medical treatment in northern England are being sent to Scotland as an increasing number of hospitals now face being overwhelmed. Patients in Cumbria who would normally be taken to the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle have instead been dispatched across the border to Dumfries, The Independent has learnt. The move came after the hospital triggered the highest Opel (operational pressures escalation level) alert, essentially an admission of being “unable to deliver comprehensive care”. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/covid-hospitals-overwhelmed-england-scotland-cumerland-dumfries-b1783111.html

Finally and making the point most strongly, this:

Different NHS Scotland rejects England’s hostile environment for vulnerable migrant mothers-to-be