Professor John Robertson OBA, Former Faculty Research Ethics Chair

The word 'ethics' does not appear in Prof Curtice's CV. Should I see if Dr Kennedy has any such interests? Should I check if the BMA ever considers the ethical dimensions of their surveys? I did. SFA.

In the Herald today – Labour is losing ground in Scotland as NHS blame game bites, two things are intriguing. The big one is about the NHS performance so I’ll get the lesser one out of the way first:

With mounting waiting lists, staff shortages, and bed-blocking crises, Scottish Labour has made the state of the NHS a key plank of their bid to oust the SNP from government.

Over the weekend, Dr Iain Kennedy – chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) in Scotland – told the Herald on Sunday that he believed the health service is “dying before our eyes”.

I’ll come back to the obvious problems in the above claims easily countered with the evidence but look at that easy flow by the writer, from Labour to Kennedy, a man who only recently removed the union flag icon from his x/twitter ID.

In TuS, as MSM Monitor often does too, Kennedy’s scare stories are followed quickly by interviews with Sarwar or Baillie to enable them to accuse the SNP of NHS failures.

I’m not saying this proves a deal between Kennedy and Scottish Labour but it clearly demonstrates a degree of symbiosis.

The Herald also has this remarkable notion:

Voters in Scotland are punishing Labour because they believe the NHS is performing badly — even though the health service is devolved to Holyrood — Professor Sir John Curtice has said.

Speaking to The Herald’s Unspun Live podcast, the polling guru said that while the SNP is significantly weaker than it was in 2021, Labour’s support has declined quickly since Sir Keir Starmer entered No 10.

“If people voted Labour last year, and they think the economy is doing badly, they are reluctant to vote Labour again. If they think the health service is doing badly — yes, I know it is devolved — they are less willing to vote Labour again,” he said.

By contrast, he added, SNP voters who are critical of the health service are not less likely to stick with the party.

I’m not confused and I think Curtice’s confusion is simply explained. He too believes that NHS Scotland is performing badly because, unlike those at TuS, he doesn’t research the actual data but relies on media coverage.

So, this is important. NHS Scotland is performing better, sometimes much better, than NHS England or NHS Wales, on A&E waiting times, for 4 hours but especially for 12 hour waits, on the critical 18 week wait for life-saving operations, on ambulance waits, on cancer treatment times, on 100% IVF, far less bed-blocking, target-busting drug and alcohol treatment and so on. It has had no strikes, has more staff and beds and cleaner hospitals. The evidence is summarised in TuS posts (search for them) and is based on official statistics.

Curtice, then thinks Scots voters seem to still want to punish Scottish Labour for the SNP’s ‘badly performing NHS. For him it makes little sense. Does he think Scots stupidly don’t know it’s devolved and are blaming UK Labour for NHS Scotland performance?

Here’s another interpretation. They’re not stupid. They know NHS Scotland is far better than NHS England and Wales and they know that a Labour government in Holyrood would result in its decline to the level in England & Wales, as privatisation is then allowed to spread.

Maybe they’re even less stupid than that and have heard of this Oxford University Research? You know, the one Jackie Baillie and Anas Sarwar have promised Wes Streeting that they won’t read?

From Oxford University researchers, reported in The Lancet, on 29 February 2024:

A new review has concluded that hospitals that are privatised typically deliver worse quality care after converting from public ownership. The study, led by University of Oxford researchers, has been published in The Lancet Public Health. The researchers carried out a meta-analysis based on evidence from 13 longitudinal studies, covering a range of high-income countries.* Each study assessed quality of healthcare measures for patients before and after health service privatisation, at either the hospital or regional level. The studies included measured indicators of care quality which included staffing levels, patient mix by insurance type, the number of services provided, workload for doctors, and health outcomes for patients such as avoidable hospitalisations.

Key findings:

• Increases in privatisation generally corresponded with worse quality of care, with no studies included in the review finding unequivocally positive effects on health outcomes.
• Hospitals converting from public to private ownership status tended to make higher profits. This was mainly achieved by reducing staff levels and reducing the proportion of patients with limited health insurance coverage.
• Privatisation generally corresponded with fewer cleaning staff employed per patient, and higher rates of patient infections.
• In some studies, higher levels of hospital privatisation corresponded with higher rates of avoidable deaths.
• However, in some cases (e.g. Croatia), privatisation led to some benefits for patient access, through more precise appointments and new means of care delivery, such as out-of-hours telephone calls.

According to the researchers, the results challenge the theory that privatisation can improve the quality of healthcare through increased market competition, and by enabling a more flexible and patient-centred approach.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-02-29-new-study-links-hospital-privatisation-worse-patient-care#:~:text=A%20new%20review%20has%20concluded,in%20The%20Lancet%20Public%20Health.

Watch a report here:

Footnote – In case it’s not obvious, this is very high quality rigorous independent research. You can trust it.

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