SNP verbally oppose NHS privatisation but quietly implement it
Despite lofty denunciations of NHS privatisation, the SNP's record fails to match the rhetoric
Lofty rhetoric condemning NHS privatisation has long been part of the SNP political playbook, but what happens when we actually examine their record? We find is a Scottish Government perfectly content to join hands with the private sector on the quiet, while condemning privatisation publicly.
On 16 July 2021 the SNP claimed on their website that only an independent Scotland could protect the NHS from ‘Tory privatisation’,
“In an independent Scotland, we can be certain Westminster governments will not be able to threaten our NHS.
That threat is real and growing.”
It is possible to agree in part with some of that - there is a real threat of rising private healthcare involvement in the Scottish NHS. And it is growing. But it is not the Tories who are driving that bus. If you wish to see less private sector involvement in the Scottish NHS, it isn’t the union you need to kick aside, it’s the SNP.
Take for example the fact that the SNP government has been spending millions of taxpayers pounds on private security in the NHS; despite their long term claims to be opposed to private contracts within the Scottish health system. Back in January 2019 the Scottish Conservatives discovered via a freedom of information request that the SNP had spent £3.91m the previous year alone on private contract security.
Despite SNP claims to oppose private contracts within the NHS, they have become quite addicted to them for security purposes it seems:
Scottish NHS spending on private security contracts:
2013/14 – £2.80m
2014/15 – £3.01m
2015/16 – £3.34m
2016/17 – £3.46m
2017/18 – £3.91m
Total – £16.52m
And that is just private security contracts. If we examine Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that the private sector is at the “very margins” of the Scottish NHS, we find grounds to question her.
Indeed, the SNP had to resort to spending millions of taxpayers money on sending NHS patients private to help reduce the waiting times. An investigation by healthandcare.scot discovered that 18% of the total funding allocated under the Waiting Times Improvement Plan for 2019 was set aside for private sector.
So when Nicola Sturgeon said in 2017 “as long as the SNP is in office, the NHS will always be in public hands”, you might forgive me for being sceptical. Allocating 18% of the Waiting Times Improvement Plan 2019 for the private sector is the exact same private contracting the SNP claim to oppose. Yet there it is. And why? Because the SNP - even in 2019 before the COVID pandemic - had failed catastrophically to deal with waiting times.
So in came the private sector to bail the SNP mismanagement of public healthcare out. All at the same time the first minister was pretending to oppose the very policies she was presiding over. That 18% by the way represented £18.3m - all earmarked at that time by the SNP for private contract work with the NHS.
But let nobody forget that in 2016 the SNP blew £187m of taxpayers' cash on private operations because state-funded hospitals couldn’t meet demand pressures. The Daily Record reported at that time just how extensive the involvement between the NHS and the private sector had become by 2016 under the SNP:
So let absolutely nobody in the SNP tell anyone that the SNP oppose private sector involvement in the NHS. The truth is, the Scottish Government under the SNP has been more than content to let a growing closeness between private and public sectors emerge. And there are very good reasons to do so, but the issue here is the SNPs lying - pretending they aren’t doing the very things they actually are.
Another example of the disjointed nature of SNP rhetoric and reality can be found on how they vote in Westminster. On the Health and Care Bill the Labour Party proposed amendment 78 seeking to ban private health care firms from being appointed to NHS decision-making boards or local integrated care boards. That was defeated ‘Ayes’ 192 to ‘noes’ 300. But the interesting thing was that all 45 SNP MPs abstained.
Apparently while they verbally condemn - on principle you understand - private sector involvement with the NHS … they just couldn’t be bothered to vote to stop it. Guess they can brush down their old excuse about it being an ‘English only issue’, but that has never necessarily stopped them in the past. I guess SNP principled objections to private sector involvement with the NHS ends at the alleged border between Scotland and England?
That sort of behaviour might be described as opportunistic nationalism, but it cannot be described as the stuff of socially democratic high principle. Truth is, the SNP are not social democrats. Nor are they particularly fussed about working with the private healthcare sector when it can help improve standards, reduce waiting times or ease seasonal pressures on the NHS.
As with everything regarding Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP, mind the yawning gap between the rhetoric and what is actually being done.
Sources:
healthandcare.Scot investigation: ‘Millions spent sending NHS Scotland patients private’
Daily Record’s 2016 report ‘NHS blows £187m of taxpayers' cash on private ops because state-funded hospitals can't meet demand’
Scotsman ‘Nicola Sturgeon under fire over private firms doing 'routine operations' in NHS hospitals’
Daily Business ‘SNP accused of hypocrisy over use of private firms in NHS’
House of Commons Labour Amendment 78 vote record ‘Health and Care Bill Report Stage: Amendment 78’
A very confused article. The scottish NHS is only administrated in Scotland, it is funded and supplied by Westminster and the UK supply chain. Scottish health boards come under the same budgetary stress as English trusts. Sturgeon is against privatization but cant do anything about it as the real problem is 40 years of under funding, PFI hospitals and a staffing crisis exacerbated by Brexit.