Save our NHS from privatisation, under-funding and poor leadership

by Colin Fox, SSP national co-spokesperson

• First Minister John Swinney recently acknowledged, ‘The NHS in Scotland is facing multiple crises.’ [27/1/25]. The British Medical Association [BMA] agrees, adding, ‘The NHS is suffering the most severe crisis in its history.’ Stories now abound across Britain recording the human cost of the emergency engulfing the NHS.

Waiting times at record levels
NHS Scotland promised 90% of A&E patients would be seen within 4 hours of their arrival. But the picture across Britain makes a fool of such promises.

Liverpool’s main A&E hospital, for example, recorded delays of 54 hours. People turning up on a Thursday morning were not being seen until Sunday afternoon!

It is commonplace to have ambulance paramedics spend half their twelve-hour shifts sitting outside hospitals waiting to discharge seriously ill and distressed patients.

Bed blocking crisis
Sixty thousand otherwise fit patients remain in hospital due to a lack of home care provision. Moreover 3,600 people died of Covid in Scottish care homes described as not fit for purpose highlighting the transparent failure of our social care system.

And yet Nicola Sturgeon’s promise of a National Care Service has now been scrapped.

Vital Operations delayed
In Scotland 90,000 have waited more than a year for life-saving medical treatment. More than 7.6 million people in the UK are waiting for operations.

Privatisation has stolen £billions from NHS budgets
Professor Allyson Pollock, Britain’s most trenchant PFI critic, put it best when she concluded ‘PFI. Where the NHS pays for three hospitals and gets only one!’ There are 17,500 NHS Consultants working privately in the UK, yet Scotland has fewer GPs than we did ten years ago!

Public satisfaction with NHS at an all time low
The British Social Attitudes Survey found only 29% of respondents were satisfied with the care provided by the NHS. People highlighted long waiting times, staff shortages and the lack of government support as the most aggravating features.

Heart-breaking stories are unfortunately ‘ten a penny’ now with families feeling let down as relatives die because an ambulance did not show up. Or where fathers, mothers, sons or daughters pass away in hospital corridors without the dignity and compassion the NHS Charter promised in their ultimate hour of need.

The evidence of an NHS in trouble is not hard to find. Consequently, there is a growing feeling it is no longer there for us when we need it. The causes of this shocking situation are all too clear.

Staff Shortages
There is the enormous level of staff shortages [exacerbated by the fall in morale during the pandemic].

Privatisation
The introduction of the ‘internal market’ by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980’s was both a turning point and an affront to the public health principles upon which the NHS was built. Two decades of Tony Blair’s PFIs added insult to injury.

And Labour’s failure to end the private patient privileges Anuerin Bevan promised to eradicate in the 1940’s, continue to do their damage.

Democratic deficit
And there is also the profound ‘democratic deficit’ at the heart of the NHS. What confidence can we have in the leadership of our NHS when the Health and Social Care Minister Wes Streeting threatens further privatisation.

His ‘ten-year plan for the NHS’, to be unveiled in the spring, has been widely trailed as advocating further betrayals of the founding principles of the NHS.

Little wonder then that Amanda Pritchard, NHS Chief Executive in England and Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, taking their lead from the Minister, argue ‘the NHS must look to the private sector for solutions to this crisis.’ [‘NHS chiefs call for rethink on private investment restrictions’ Financial Times, 14/2/25]

Solutions
In the face of this onslaught the Scottish Socialist Party believes we must ‘Save the NHS from privatisation, under-funding & poor leadership if it is to survive’.

Neither Labour, the SNP [who privatised Edinburgh’s Sick Kids hospital by selling it off to Macquarie Capital Solutions of Sydney, Australia] nor Reform can be trusted to protect the NHS.

1. The SSP want the NHS we were promised in 1948 by insisting on the following plan:
2. Renegotiate all Private Finance Initiative contracts to eliminate the profiteering that is draining NHS funds.
3. Introduce a national care service; free at the point of need, paid for out of general taxation, universally available and with 21st-century standards of care to end the crisis therein.
4. Demand all our doctors, dentists, etc., become salaried employees of the NHS — not private businesses.
5. Introduce Fair Pay for all NHS Staff to end poverty pay in the NHS and solve chronic recruitment shortages to help boost staff morale.
6. Democratise the NHS to ensure its decisions are supported by those who pay for it and use it most of all.

And we intend to take this case to the people of Scotland throughout the coming year.

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