Readers' Letters: Starmer and Reeves must reverse decision on charities and NI

First Minister John Swinney is right to call on Chancellor Rachel Reeves to exempt charities from National Insurance increases (“Scottish public sector and voluntary groups join calls for National Insurance funding”, 4 January).

The current plan – to exempt statutory NHS and social care providers from NI increased but impose a £75 million hike on Scottish charities providing frontline services on their behalf – is illogical in its reasoning and will be catastrophic if implemented. The only apparent positive of this policy is its dubious success in uniting the whole country and the entire political spectrum against it.

The statutory sector commissions charities such as Scottish Huntington’s Association for a reason; we provide a specialist service it cannot. Charities are the fence at the top of the cliff that diminish the requirement for emergency support at the bottom. The UK Government’s current plan to try to balance its books on the back of such charities will put yet more out of operation, leaving the most vulnerable in our society abandoned and piling further pressure on already overrun and significantly more expensive statutory services.

First Minister John Swinney (left) wants Keir Starmer and his UK Cabinet to bin National Insurance changes that would hurt charities (Picture: Andy Buchanan - Pool/Getty Images)

Labour’s manifesto promised to “stop the chaos, turn the page, and start to rebuild our country”. By listening to those at the coalface, acknowledging an honest mistake and correcting it before the inevitable damage is inflicted, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Chancellor can be the positive change they promised to be. Labour has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by righting this wrong before it comes into force.

If it doesn’t do so – and soon – even more essential charities will have to cut services or fold, and lives will be lost. None can be wished back into existence. The time to do the right thing is, therefore, now.

Alistair Haw, Chief Executive Officer, Scottish Huntington's Association, Paisley

Get flu jag

Your front page report (4 January) highlights the “significant flu strain on NHS”. This has been caused by an “extraordinary” level of recent hospital flu admissions which was also recorded for the week ending 15 December when the Public Health Scotland weekly surveillance report showed an 82 per cent increase in emergency hospital flu admissions. It also highlighted back then that over two-thirds of those eligible for the flu vaccine had chosen not to be inoculated. The latest weekly report, to which your report refers, showed an 83 per cent increase in those testing positive for flu in week 51 and a further increase in the latest week recorded. Since the end of the pandemic clinicians have been warning about a winter flu spike. This year’s strain has been particularly virulent yet more of those eligible have not to taken the vaccine. It’s not too late, with numbers remaining low, the NHS should consider rolling out unclaimed vaccines to children and other workers exposed to vulnerable groups. Many, like me, fully inoculated since the first lockdown, will not have had any virus in that time, partly through luck but mainly by following sound preventative measures. Given the NHS has suffered this winter through falling flu vaccine take up one wonders why the government, given some A&E units are reporting “extreme pressure”, did not initiate the type of vaccine campaign it ran during the pandemic. It seems lessons of good public health practice have been forgotten, yet if our governments are to save the NHS surely such preventative measures are vital.

Neil Anderson, Edinburgh

Sick and tired

Mary Thomas (Letters, 4 January) treats us to yet another rendition of the sketch by Harry Enfield as Dougal: “Oh yes, everything’s better in Scotland”. This sketch is available on YouTube. I doubt very much that it was any comfort to the 117,740 patients who waited in Scottish hospital emergency units for more than eight hours in 2023 that the same, or perhaps worse, was happening to A&E patients in England or Wales. Even if patients on trollies were issued with emergency buzzers to attract staff attention, as seems to have been the case in some hospitals, they still awaited admission and treatment, and had problems with getting to loos and with changing clothes.

I should imagine that most of us are more concerned with whether the Scottish NHS is improving, or not, compared with its own previous performance, rather than with that of other regions. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ report in November 2024, A&E waiting times in Scotland were worse than in 2023, and also worse than in the years before the pandemic. In England, they were worse than pre-pandemic figures but better than in 2023.

As the Institute for Fiscal Studies report says, the NHS throughout the UK, and especially in Scotland, needs to improve its productivity. That should be the aim rather than playing party games with such a serious issue.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Too soon

Much as it hurts, because I am not one of Donald Trump's natural fans, I endorse wholeheartedly his plea to the UK not to shut down the North Sea prematurely as a major producer of oil and gas (your report, 4 January). While they have a use, I also share his doubts about “windmills” being anything other than a very limited but useful and periodic stand-by.

Like a stopped clock, Donald Trump is right at least twice a day, and he is spot-on there. Of course, the product is finite and will have to stop, but why the rush to outdo everyone else with our zealotry and infliction of pain on our weakest and most vulnerable?

All that means is that in the interim period until surely nuclear will have to shoulder the bulk of the load, we will need to buy the required oil and gas to survive from the Middle East and Russia. Not the most reliable of sources. Think about it.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Write to The Scotsman

We welcome your thoughts – NO letters submitted elsewhere, please. Write to [email protected] including name, address and phone number – we won't print full details. Keep letters under 300 words, with no attachments, and avoid 'Letters to the Editor/Readers’ Letters' or similar in your subject line – be specific. If referring to an article, include date, page number and heading.