Scottish Labour endorses Westminster’s NHS privatisation

by the SNP
Posted on
5 months ago
2 min read

The deputy leader of Labour’s branch office in Scotland has endorsed plans to privatise the NHS – and backed similar plans for Scotland.

This is in the sharpest of contrasts to the SNP, which has fought tooth and nail against repeated Westminster attempts to privatise the NHS.

Labour has publicly backed increased involvement from the private sector, dialling up the rhetoric in recent months. The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has previously said he wants to hold the door “wide open” for the private sector and go further than Tony Blair in expanding private sector involvement.

The deputy leader of Scottish Labour refused to determine to what extent she thought the private sector should be involved in Scotland’s NHS.

Labour has a damaging legacy of PFI in Scotland. Its wheeling and dealing with our precious NHS has landed the taxpayer with an eye-watering £30billion bill – that is still being paid off.

Fundamentally, healthcare in Scotland should be free at the point of need. Backdoor privatisation has been proven to make services more inefficient, increase dissatisfaction with the health service and drive up costs.

Under the SNP, Scotland’s health service has undergone radical reform for the better.

We have the most GPs per head of the population, the best performing A&Es in the UK, and the only NHS workforce to avoid pay related industrial action.

We spend more per person on frontline health than England’s NHS and have allocated £30 million to reduce waiting lists.

We’ve abolished charges for prescriptions, dental checkups and hospital car parking, building on the NHS’s founding principle – that healthcare should be free at the point of need.

Your SNP MPs will always argue against privatisation and fight for fairer NHS spending. Especially as Westminster’s budget decisions affect our ability to properly fund our own public services here in Scotland.

And your SNP Scottish Government will continue to reject Labour’s outdated plans to dismantle the precious NHS we all know and cherish.

The solutions New Labour were wrong then and are wrong now. Scotland’s NHS needs the kind of radical reform that only the SNP stand ready to deliver. Reheated Blairism will not affect the change these isles so desperately need.

Westminster parties have proven themselves to be hopelessly out of touch with voters on the health service. Only the SNP will fight for our NHS and defend it to the hilt from London’s privatisation plans.