NHS concerns

Concern for the welfare of the NHS in Scotland by the Yes campaign has been variously labelled as a “cheap political scaremongering stunt”, “an iniquitous assertion” and the “biggest untruth of the referendum”.

These categorical statements have been made by individuals who either have a vested interest in distorting the reality, or who simply have not taken the time to explore the facts behind the concerns.

These contributors to the debate also choose to ignore the inconvenient fact that Alex Salmond candidly conceded on national television that the NHS could not be privatised in Scotland against our will.

This week (Letters, 20 October) Dougie Jamieson comprehensively nails one half of the myth about the concerns, namely that if public funding is replaced by private finance in the NHS in England and then categorised as non-public expenditure, in Dr Allyson Pollock’s view, there could be serious knock-on effects for Scotland due to a reduction of spending via the Barnett formula.

The second element of concern relates to the coalition’s determination to press on with another £4 billion of cuts to the Scottish block grant.

When these cuts are made – and if the funding for the NHS is to be held as sacrosanct – other funding priorities will inevitably suffer.

When that happens, we can look forward to another batch of letters from the usual suspects noted above, rushing to condemn the Scottish Government rather than the Westminster coalition.

Douglas Turner

Derby Street

Edinburgh