The Westminster parties don’t value free prescriptions
by In England prescriptions cost £9.65 per visit. In Scotland they’re free. The SNP abolished this tax on ill health.
However, keeping free prescriptions protected cannot be taken for granted.
Few people would trust the Tories to keep prescriptions in Scotland free and with the Westminster government vetoing and ignoring decisions by the Scottish Parliament, no policy is safe from that party.
And Scottish voters cannot trust the Liberal Democrats to support free prescriptions; since propping up David Cameron’s Tory government, they have u-turned on every policy from free tuition to opposing Brexit.
As for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour, you would be forgiven for thinking they would protect free prescriptions but past and recent comments paint a different picture.
Every year since election to government the SNP has shown its commitment to free prescriptions and abolished them. We value this policy.
However, over that period Scottish Labour have criticised the policy – a former Labour leader described it as “something for nothing”; and their current health spokesperson even said they would bring back prescription charges:
Host: So, you want free prescriptions?
Jackie Baillie: No …
Host: You want free prescriptions scrapped then? …
Jackie Baillie: Absolutely …
(Labour’s current health spokesperson on Scotland Tonight, 4 October 2012)
As we approach another Westminster election, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party are already making worrying signals about how they would run the NHS.
Keir Starmer’s health spokesperson has attacked the British Medical Association for being “hostile” to UK Labour plans for the NHS; he’s said the NHS would be “wide open” to the private sector; and he’s echoed Tory language by saying the “NHS will go bankrupt if it doesn’t reform”.
More recently he’s accused the NHS of using ‘every winter crisis as an excuse for cash’ and said: “The NHS is going to have to get used to the fact that money is tight”; and that he plans to ‘open up NHS to private entrepeneurs‘.
And when it comes to prescriptions Labour’s social security spokesperson has indicated that Tory plans to withhold free prescriptions from people seeking work ‘is not going far enough’.
So, with Keir Starmer’s Scotland spokesperson in Westminster indicating that Labour wouldn’t reverse the Tory policy of vetoing Scottish Parliament powers, can anyone be confident that Keir Starmer wouldn’t interfere in Scotland’s NHS?
Labour are taking Scotland for granted. They assume you won’t notice these attacks on the NHS. If you value free prescriptions there’s only one party to vote to protect them – the SNP.