By stewartb

Are comparisons between the constituent parts of the UK only deemed newsworthy by the editors of public service broadcasters when they can be framed as unfavourable to Scotland? Beyond the news of health service delivery in Scotland – as reported by BBC Scotland and on the front pages of the Unionist press that are aggregated and amplified daily on the Scotland page of the BBC News website – what do we find is the reality?

An NHS Scotland that on many performance metrics operates more effectively and more efficiently to the benefit of patients than its peers in the rUK. An NHS Scotland which on most metrics performs very much better than its most closely comparable peers in the north of Ireland and in Wales. Yes still not good enough: still much more for NHS Scotland and the Scottish Government to improve! But how?

We also have an NHS England which continues to struggle to meet its own performance targets – and this is forecast to continue by independent experts . And this struggling NHS England is now the responsibility of a Labour government in Westminster yet it continues to experience what occurred under recent Tory governments, post COVID.

I think it reasonable to conclude that different health ministers, senior civil servants in different health ministries, and senior managers and clinicians in different NHS bodies across the UK will have been actively looking for some considerable time now at ways to improve effectiveness and efficiency on behalf of patients and staff in the parts of the NHS for which they have responsibility. Differences in performance in different parts of the UK – as indicated earlier – are evident, though arguably sometimes marginal. Do seep rooted and widespread problems exist with the UK’s ‘system’? It would seem so, though the intense politicisation by the MSM of the NHS in Scotland seems intent on keeping voters here ill-informed about UK context and perspective.

Comparisons between the NHS in England, the north of Ireland, Scotland and Wales are important. But more than that, the NHS performance shortfalls and the differences need to be placed in the context of the powers that the responsible governments have to resource a ‘fix’ for the NHS in England and elsewhere across the UK.

The persisting failure to fix the performance of NHS England – under both Tory and now Labour governments in Westminster – is arguably of a different order from what can be levelled at those responsible for publicly-funded health services in the north of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Only NHS England has as its responsible government one with ALL the powers – all the agency over resources and their allocation – of a currency-issuing, independent nation-state. If Westminster is finding the problems of NHS England intractable – as it clearly is – how can governments with severely limited devolved powers over resourcing make more than marginal improvements?

Even with a Labour government in Westminster – one arguably more committed to the NHS than its Tory predecessors – NHS England continues to struggle. No ready solution to entrenched problems facing the NHS (and social care) across the UK appears to be available from the ‘Union’ upon which we outside of England have to rely. Of course, that context – the reality of that dependency – will never be properly exposed by BBC Scotland and the Unionist press!

Crowdfunder - https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going
Bank transfer - JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account 12266421