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From BBC Scotland today, the above and:

People in Scotland are spending a greater proportion of their life in poor health than in previous years, new figures from the National Records of Scotland (NRS), external show. The latest figures for the 2022 to 2024 period shows healthy life expectancy is now 59.1 years for men and 59.4 years for women. Healthy life expectancy, which is the number of years a person can expect to live in good health, has been falling since the mid-2010s for both men and women. Life expectancy has seen a small increase in recent years, however.

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Without the attempts, one hand-tied, of the SNP in Government, it would have been worse.

What’s my evidence? It’s not directly, but surely part, more widely, of the effects of the austerity politics of UK Conservative and now UK Labour governments.

See this:

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.

So, if austerity increases the death rate, it seems more than plausible that it also reduces the proportion of life lived in good health

Might these SNP policies explain Scotland’s significantly lower extra death rate in this period and have moderated the reduction of the proportion of life lived in good health?

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

Please Support Talking-up Scotland at:

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Click on the above. 

Or direct bank transfer at Sort Code 08-91-04  Account - 12266421 Name - JOHN ROBERTSON