The Herald still desperately stoking the fires of supposed discontent with NHS Scotland which they hope might help save Anas Sarwar from a near extinction event on May 7/8.

There is far bigger news on this issue.

In 2023/2024 (latest) NHS Scotland payed out £47.3m for health-related complaints.¹

All things being equal with ten times the population, you might expect the NHS England to be around £480m.

It was £3.1bn! ²

More than 6 times as high, per head of population.

Why such a difference? Scotland’s hospitals are safer.

See this from 2022:

Dr Pelle Gustafson, chief medical officer, of Swedish patient insurer Löf, said he was “particularly impressed” by the work in Scotland over the past 10 years during a meeting of the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee.

The Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP), which has been in existence for around 13 years, was set up to make patient safety a priority in NHS Scotland, drawing on lessons from the airline industry such as introducing checklists. Gustafson was asked by Tory MP Dr Luke Evans which country he would hold at the “very top of the pillar” for preventative work during an evidence session on NHS litigation reform last week.

He responded: “If you take all preventive work as regards patient safety, I would say that I am personally very impressed by Scotland. “You have a system that is fairly equal all over the place and you also have improvement activities going on. I am very impressed by Scotland.”

He added: “I am particularly impressed by the Scottish work over the last 10 years. There are a lot of things that we, in the Nordic countries, can learn from Scotland too.”³

Sources:

1. https://www.nss.nhs.scot/media/5856/cnoris-annual-report-2023-2024-published.pdf
2. https://resolution.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/E03358428-NHS-Resolution-ARA-24-25-Web-accessible.pdf
3. https://www.thenational.scot/news/19850998.swedish-expert-praises-leading-work-patient-safety-scotland/