In August 2025, STV and many other media reported:
Long NHS waits are over 800 times more common in Scotland than they are in England, Scottish Labour has claimed. The party said its own analysis of publicly available figures showed Scotland had nearly 15,000 ongoing waits of two years or more – representing one case per 367 people. Meanwhile, NHS England reported having 182 waits of more than two years, or around one in 317,000 people. The figures involve those waiting more than two years on NHS outpatient, inpatient or day case waiting lists. Under this measure, Labour said the total number of waits of more than two years is 82 times higher in Scotland – or about 864 times higher once adjusted for population size. https://news.stv.tv/scotland/long-nhs-waits-over-800-times-more-common-in-scotland-than-england-labour-says
It’s true. Waits over two years for non-urgent (that term omitted above) procedures are far more common per capita in Scotland than in England.
How was this achieved? Around £11.8 billion in 2020/21–2021/22 (up £2 billion year-on-year), with further growth in subsequent years as elective recovery ramped up was transferred from other NHS budgets. https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/4674169/1/Fletcher-etal-2024-The-impact-of-nhs-outsourcing.pdf
No assessment has been done of the effects on the areas money was transferred out of.
There was significant political pressure behind the drive to clear waits of over two years (104 weeks) for non-urgent procedures like knee and hip replacements. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Sajid Javid publicly championed the plan and the targets. Johnson described it as a key part of recovering from the pandemic, while warning that waiting lists would rise before falling. The government framed reducing long waits as a top priority, tying it to public confidence in the NHS after COVID disruptions. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60289635
This is, to my knowledge, the only NHS waiting time list where NHS England seems to do better than NHS Scotland.
There are, however, many waiting lists where NHS Scotland does better. Off the top of my head:
A&E, 18 weeks for urgent conditions such as cancer, heart disease and stroke, heart and lung transplants, all ahead and some well ahead of NHS England.
18 week Child and Adolescent mental health, 52 week IVF for fertility, 3 week drug and alcohol treatment, all target-busting and no or distorted medias coverage.
You can check all of this here.
What’s the dark side?
From:
In the UK, where healthcare is a devolved matter, England and Scotland have different policies to reduce waiting lists for elective surgery. England is redirecting NHS funding to the private sector using commercial contracts, Scotland is expanding in-house capacity.
The poor have greater need and less access to hip and knee replacement surgery.
Inequalities in admissions grew at two and a half times the rate in England than in Scotland over the whole study period. In both countries, waiting time inequality for hip surgery fell during the period of high NHS funding and low private sector use. A two-tier system is now operating within England’s NHS. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851026000424?ref=pdf_download&fr=RR-2&rr=9e1d896a99adfc20
Why do the poor have greater need?
Lower socioeconomic status correlates with jobs involving heavy manual labour, repetitive knee bending, lifting, kneeling, or prolonged standing (e.g., farming, construction, floor-laying, bricklaying, fishing, cleaning). These increase knee OA risk up to 2–5 times compared to sedentary jobs; some studies show similar (though often weaker) links for hips. Cumulative physical workload, awkward postures, and joint stress accelerate cartilage wear. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2911890/
I feel sure you can add to the above, in first place, poor women bringing up often larger families, often alone, often caring for sick parents, and without the labour-saving services and devices others may have.
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Talking-up Scotland 
“Long NHS waits are over 800 times more common in Scotland than they are in England, Scottish Labour has claimed”.
I’ll tell you what is “more common in England than Scotland” .
UK Labour government Ministers and also , in the past, some of the Labour Official opposition shadow cabinet members at WM accepting donations from rich donors, some whose business interests include private healthcare in the NHS.
Plus talking about the NHS …………..below is something recently noted and reported by some within the UK media in respect to Wes Streeting the current Labour ‘UK’ Health Secretary.
The UK parliament Register of interests notes this for Wes Streeting:
ODP Group (company controlled by Peter Hearn)
£53,000 accepted by Streeting in February 2025
£55,000 accepted by Streeting in February 2026
ODP Group – well EveryDoctor an online source who campaign against privatisation of the NHS wrote this about them:
“OPD Group Ltd (a company controlled by Peter Hearn)”
“Provides services to the NHS. OPD Group is ultimately controlled by Peter Hearn whose company Odgers Berndtson offers headhunting services to the NHS as well as the private healthcare sector. The firm has faced criticism for some of the senior executives it has helped recruit to the NHS. Former TalkTalk executive Dido Harding was headhunted by Odgers Berndtson to lead the NHS Test and Trace programme during the pandemic, which was later deemed to be ineffective by MPs”
They also show the names of some of the Labour MP’s who have accepted donations from various sources , including OPD Group, as well as other large donations from other sources to them as Labour MP’s (and as Labour UK government Ministers).
Wes Streeting, Yvette Cooper, Ian Murray, Heidi Alexander, Dan Jarvis and Alex Baker.
EveryDoctor Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales No. 11695500 and they state on their webpage that “The NHS was founded to provide care based on need, not on ability to pay. When financial incentives shape policy and services, the long term integrity of our health system is at risk”
Also under the header:
“Private Money, Public Decisions. Who Is Funding Our MPs” ?
They, EveryDoctor online, states who , under “updated our database”, as Labour MP’s , have received donations and they specify the respective total amounts that they, as Labour politicians, have received in large donations.
“Labour MPs received almost five times as much in donations from donors connected to private healthcare as all other MPs combined, according to EveryDoctor’s analysis of the MPs’ register of financial interests”
I also saw this post online on ‘X’ via Dr Dan Goyal , an NHS Medical consultant in response to one of these large donations from OPD Group Ltd to Wes Streeting:
“So, as a doctor I can’t accept a plastic pen from a pharmaceutical company because it might influence my prescribing decisions, but MPs can accept thousands in cash from those who want to privatise the NHS and it won’t affect their decision-making??? CTFO”.
So really surely Jackie Baillie needs to turn her attention onto her own Labour party and clean house there , as it is obvious Labour HQ have a big problem as they are looking fairly compromised with the large donations that they are accepting from certain sources……….
The big Q is – what is expected from Labour politicians for all of these unusually large donations ?
Well I , as an ordinary soul , couldn’t possibly comment.
However the UK media should be both scrutinising this and so then commentating upon it……….incessantly.
Liz S
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O/T but also on topic , in a very tenuous way, as if we are talking about “The dark side”…..well I saw this online :
“BREAKING: Reform UK’s Holyrood campaign in meltdown as fifth candidate quits”
“James Glen has “withdrawn” his candidacy a week after he had been unveiled as one of the party’s candidates”.
Glen, was Reform UK’s candidate in Edinburgh North Western.
So now we have 5 lost reform UK candidates…..I kind of feel there will be even more disclosures, revelations and so then even mofre lost candidates for them before May.
It is only one week since Reform UK candidates unveiled all of their candidates.
Yet Offord thinks he can lord it over the SNP in calling them “rotten”, well from where I am standing I know what really really stinks (and so then who it is who is really really “rotten”).
That would be Reform UK and their pathetic and fake vetting process Reform UK have pretended that they have done on all of their candidates for May’s elections.
Unless of course their supposed ‘vigorous’ vetting process was only a case of Reform UK advertising for someone to stand for them as a candidate…..if so….then that was it….they were in as a candidate.
I mean all of this information now discovered about some of their candidates , was surely the same information that somehow was either missed- not checked- completely ignored or welcomed by a supposed (but clearly not) Reform UK “vigorous vetting process”.
(As that was what Thomas Kerr told Connor Gillies of SKY News last year in respect to them choosing future candidates for this year’s Scottish parliament elections for Reform UK).
So what happens now ?
Does this now mean that no candidate from Reform UK will stand in these constituencies where a candidate has either been suspended or has withdrawn ?
( Of course Offord has himself now joined in with all of this controversy linked to Reform UK , with the homophobic non funny non joke that he told at a Rugby club dinner – now blaming intoxication – so was this non funny and offensive non joke said off the cuff , as supposed to it also being written down in his after dinner speech).
They really are the lowest of the low.
Liz S
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