By stewartb

With the publication today (April 3) by BBC Scotland of comparative information on the NHS in the four nations of the UK, does this mean that benchmarking NHS Scotland against its peers in England, NI and Wales is no longer to be dismissed as ‘whataboutery’? Seems it’s become ‘legitimise’!

Helpful in examining this contention: ‘The truth is if the British Labour Party knew how to fix the NHS it would be done by now. – in Wales’

From the BBC News website (April 2) there is this: ‘NHS Wales major repairs backlog nears £1bn’.

It reports that the “high” and “significant” risk backlog for the NHS Wales estate has grown to £917m, a 71% rise in four years, according to NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership figures. When a “risk-adjusted” backlog is aggregated for all NHS buildings in Wales – buildings with major problems where safety could be at risk – the bill comes to more than £1bn.

The BBC article gives a detailed breakdown of issues around NHS Wales buildings, published for 2024-25,. The figures Include but are not limited to these: (1) three hospitals (Bronglais, Prince Philip and Ysbyty Gwynedd) have 40% or more of their space not considered fire safety compliant; (2) Ysbyty Gwynedd also has 35% of its space not regarded as health and safety compliant; (3) there are more than 30 NHS sites which have more than half of buildings pre-dating the birth of the NHS in 1948, mostly clinics and community hospitals; (4) another 17 sites, including UHW and Bronglais hospitals, have buildings mostly between 50 and 60 years old.

The article also report that the recently-opened Grange hospital near Cwmbran – opened early during the Covid pandemic but first proposed in 2004 – was the first major new hospital built in Wales in 20 years.

And on NHS maintenance, it notes the problem isn’t confined to Wales, with NHS England having an estimated repair and maintenance backlog of £16bn. (Of course, the absence of adequate spend on NHS estate maintenance in Wales does NOT affect the NHS budget in England: the failure to spend £16bn on NHS maintenance in England most certainly does impact negatively the budgets of the governments in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh.

Meanwhile in Scotland, campaigning by the British Labour Party – with the context-free amplification typical of much of the MSM here -was intent recently on duping voters over the political significance of a maintenance backlog in NHS Scotland.

Source: The Scotsman (15 December, 2025) ‘Scotland’s NHS ‘crumbling’ as £1.5bn maintenance backlog revealed‘. The Scotsman is using a figure obtained by the Labour in Scotland.

Dame Jackie Baillie MSP, Scottish Labour’s health spokeswoman is quoted: “The SNP has let our NHS crumble and patients and staff are paying the price.” And: “The truth is if the SNP knew how to fix our NHS it would be done by now.”

More Labour hypocrisy? Scotland’s voters can indeed choose the British Labour Party to govern from Holyrood but if the NHS is a priority consideration when casting votes why would they, given the Labour’s track record on the NHS? To paraphrase the Party’s health spokesperson in Scotland: ‘The truth is if the Labour Party knew how to fix our NHS (within the devolution settlement) it would be done by now, in Wales.’

The causes of the ills of the NHS across the UK are more complex: from a Scotland perspective, in common with the rUK, they merit and require a much deeper analysis than crass ‘SNPbad’!