I don’t often use the word “lies” in politics. I save it for the most egregious examples of political dishonesty. One which has made me incredibly angry recently has been the Yes campaign’s utterly dishonest campaign on the NHS. They argued that a Yes vote was the only way to protect the NHS, saying that privatisation in England meant that there would be less in funding through the Barnett Formula. Preying on the fears of some of the most vulnerable people in our society is completely unacceptable.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies has just, to put it mildly, proved the Yes campaign wrong. This is what they have to say:
Independence would give the Scottish government more freedom to set spending and tax policies. It would also, in principle, have more freedom to borrow. That freedom would be constrained by the size of the debt it would likely inherit and the willingness of markets to lend. On most plausible scenarios it is hard to see how an independent Scotland could “end austerity” in the short run. In work published this summer we showed how, on the basis of the independent OBR’s oil forecasts, an independent Scotland would likely still have a deficit of 2.9% of GDP (borrowing of about £800 per person in today’s terms) by 2018-19 even if it followed current UK government tax and spending plans – plans that are forecast to lead to the UK as a whole actually having a small budget surplus by the same year. In this case an independent Scotland would need to implement bigger spending cuts (or more tax rises) than the UK as a whole or try to borrow more. This means it would likely be harder rather than easier to protect the NHS.
And it concludes that they find it difficult to see how an independent Scotland could spend more on the NHS than the UK could:
In the short term, then, it is hard to see how independence could allow Scotland to spend more on the NHS than would be possible within a Union where it will have significant tax raising powers and considerable say over spending priorities. Previous IFS work on the longer-term outlook for an independent Scotland’s finances suggests that under a wide range of scenarios, a combination of the eventual fall in oil revenues and an ageing population could make for a tougher fiscal outlook for Scotland than the rest of the UK and hence less room for additional spending on things like the NHS.
It’s only recently that the Yes campaign has started coming out with this line quite so brazenly. They’ve always alluded to the NHS being privatised in England and weren’t challenged on it adequately by Labour who, presumably, had their own reasons for being so silent. Having got away with this, they took their claims further. Those claims today lie in ruins. This may well open voters’ eyes to other claims they make about currency, for example.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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33 Comments
strange that you usual Scottish exLib Dem antaognists have stayed silent on this one and not tried their usual “you are wrong because Nick Clegg smells” critique.
We have to shout this one from the highest hills. The YESers are doing their usual though of refusing to engage with critical ideas and just attacking those who have the timerity of expressing them.
Eh? You think that a thinktank’s projections of hypothetical budget deficits several years out consitute proof of anything? It really really doesn’t.
The nats — if you have correctly represented their argument — may actually have a smidgin of a point here. If the UK government were to “privatize” the NHS in the sense of reducing public expenditure on it then that would mean a reduction in total government spending and therefore a reduction in the general grant to Scotland (at least I think so — I stand ready to be corrected by somebody who understands Barnett better than I), which Scotland may or may not be able to make good depending how free its own revenue-raising powers are — a problem which just doesn’t exist if it’s independent.
George Eaton from the New Statesman agrees with Caron that the IFS have shredded the Yes campaigns claims, the biggest risk to the NHS is Scottish Independence and he finishes off by saying “It is no exaggeration to say that Salmond’s claims lie in abject ruin this afternoon.”:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/09/salmonds-nhs-claims-have-been-shredded-ifs
I rarely get off the fence with any sort of enthusiasm, but the case for staying in the United Kingdom is overwhelming.
I’m not a supporter of “yes”, but based on how you lot have acted whilst in government, I really don’t see why anybody should believe a word you say about the NHS. You had your chance to do what the electorate wanted and vote against the NHS reform bill. But you didn’t. Now none of the three (four if you count the SNP) main parties can be trusted with the NHS.
OK, Scotland would have a lot of different spending commitments if it controlled all its spending, it would have a lot of different priorities to the UK, though, as well. Health would more than likely take up a bigger slice of the pie than it currently does for UK spending. Other areas would get a smaller slice. That question is for future governments to answer, not for this referendum to settle forever.
The No campaign is facing a tough sell convincing people that the priorities of the UK government reflect their own priorities or those of their communities. And the argument that Scotland should get control of its spending so that its priorities in spending match its priority challenges it faces is powerful.
@Malcolm : “f the UK government were to “privatize” the NHS in the sense of reducing public expenditure” – has anyone actually suggested that is what “privatization” means ?
OK, so what arguments of blinding technical expertise do the IFS use? None actually, at least as quoted above. They talk in simple generalities which are blissfully easy for morons like me to understand, and here’s what they say:
“On most plausible scenarios it is hard to see how an independent Scotland could “end austerity” in the short run. ”
Because, like, the Scots won’t suddenly discover the money tree. I’m with the IFS there. However, that does not tell us anything about whether an independent Scotland could spend more on health, and less on other things. They could.
“It is hard to see how independence could allow Scotland to spend more on the NHS than would be POSSIBLE within a Union…”
The capitalisation of “possible” is mine. The UK could POSSIBLY spend plenty on the NHS. The UK could also POSSIBLY wreck the NHS by privatisation, and/or spend a lot less.
Clearly the IFS think Salmond is rather over-egging his claims, and clearly they have a case. However, “IFS has, to put it mildly, proved the Yes campaign wrong” is complete nonsense!
If anyone has done any research on how the NHS plays as a scare tactic in elections and referenda, I’d like to see it.
If the NHS were to be privatised in Scotland, it would be done by the Scottish Parliament and Government – first minister A Salmond Esq – not by Westminster. So if A Salmond Esq is banging on about privatisation, is he softening up the electorate for such a policy by the SNP in the next Scottish Parliament? He should come clean.
The essence of the NHS is access to medical care without charge at the point of service, paid for out of general taxation. No government has ever threatened to change this. It is possible that Margaret Thatcher thought her reforms were going this way, but, it is said, Kenneth Clarke misled her in order to save the NHS. David Cameron (whatever you think of him) has repeatedly stated his commitment to the NHS and that his children’s lives depend on it.
Providing those NHS services has always been a mixture of public and private sector paid for from public funds, except where there are charges laid down by statute, GPs – family doctors – are private contractors to the NHS and always have been; ditto dentists and opticians. The private sector contracts for hospital services. The value of these contracts I read recently, but can’t confirm, amount to 6% of total spending in England and 1% in Scotland. These are paid for from taxes and not by patients at the point of service.
It is these contracts that seem to give the appearance of privatisation, but it is not privatisation in law, politics or practice.
OK, so what arguments of blinding technical expertise do the IFS use? None actually, at least as quoted above. They talk in simple generalities which are blissfully easy for people like me to understand, and here’s what they say:
“On most plausible scenarios it is hard to see how an independent Scotland could “end austerity” in the short run. ”
Because, like, the Scots won’t suddenly discover the money tree. I’m with the IFS there. However, that does not tell us anything about whether an independent Scotland could spend more on health, and less on other things. They could.
“It is hard to see how independence could allow Scotland to spend more on the NHS than would be POSSIBLE within a Union…”
The capitalisation of “possible” is mine. The UK could POSSIBLY spend plenty on the NHS. The UK could also POSSIBLY wreck the NHS by privatisation, and/or spend a lot less.
Clearly the IFS think Salmond is rather over-egging his claims, and clearly they have a case. However, “IFS has, to put it mildly, proved the Yes campaign wrong” is a huge overclaim!
@ Malcolm Todd
“The nats may actually have a smidgin of a point here. If the UK government were to “privatize” the NHS in the sense of reducing public expenditure on it then that would mean a reduction in total government spending and therefore a reduction in the general grant to Scotland [as a result of the Barnet formula]…”
Interesting use of the word “privatise” but no the Nats don’t even have a smidgin of a point here. Let us suppose that the UK government’s spending on the NHS was set at a lower level than MSPs’ thought reasonable for Scotland then they could either redirect funds from other spending areas: roads, education etc etc or if they thought the lack of funds was a result of the level of spending in England being below what they would like to see generally they could raise taxes in Scotland.
@ Malcolm; @ Simon: Reducing public expenditure is not privatisation. Reducing public expenditure is reducing public expenditure. It does not affect to ownership or entitlement to a service. Privatisation involves a defined series of steps that collectively are known as privatisation. It involves Parliament or the Scottish Parliament, depending on where statutory responsibility for the service lies, and stealth would almost certainly be impossible with the NHS, even if someone were foolish enough to try.
The problem iScotland has is that even the deficit predicted here is entirely predicated on oil revenue. Oil revenue that is going to fall over the coming decades, how is it going to maintain its spending in the face of falling tax revenues? Is there any answer?
@ jack. There’s any easy answer. Vote No and keep sponging off the English….
There is an interesting question here which is that the Coalition has made the NHS one of the sacred cows – protected by a ringfence. In short, other area of spend have been clobbered to protect the NHS. It has never been made entirely clear to me why this level of protection has been afforded other than, apparently, that it plays well with certain types of voter. I would actually be interested to hear why an Independent Scotland would place the NHS above all others (if indeed it chose to do so) because no one in the UK seems to have any coherent answer.
Whether we like it or not the NHS’ day of reckoning will come. I hear much in this debate about German federalism – in most lander in Germany a visit to the doctor usually results in one being presented with a bill.
I should add that I don’t as such want to be provocative here. Alex Salmond for example has come up with, so far, the only compelling answer for the foreign aid budget that I have heard. So…are NHS cuts necessarily a bad thing in the grand scheme of things? Perhaps they are, but at the very least someone might want to think about it.
Most of The SNPs “arguments”, the caricature of England as stuffed with Rich Tories, the idea that being Tory or Libdem are somehow “UnScottish” & the NHS Privatisation scare are just as much Labour as Nationalist. Even today we have seen John Prescott coming out with the same sort of stuff about “The Bullingdon Boys”. Labour have done half The SNPs work for them & they have no defence when the same sort of caricature is used against them.
Everyone is being dishonest about the NHS.
The Coalition has ring fenced expenditure, but all the political parties know that this will not be enough to plug the hole in the NHS budget caused by the increasing cost of health care for an ageing population. There must be change, but few are being honest about that.
Alex Salmond will be the luckiest person alive if the ‘no’ votes wins because so much of his case is built on a wing and prayer, and would have quickly become unstuck. However the problems with the national NHS budget will remain, and the claims being made by the SNP are not the worst of it.
This referendum is NOT about money – which is all the elite in London ever think about – its about a vision, a plan to escape from the clutches of the City of London and multi-national coporate entities and for the Scots to run their own affairs. If only those of us in the south could join them and remove those who are driven by profit and greed.
I did say they had a smidgin of a point! I’m well aware that that’s not what privatisation usually means in this context, which is why I heavily qualified it. Perhaps I should have pointed out that the chances of any government doing that in the near future are vanishingly small. However, the IFS’s guessing at what will happen with the economy of either country, with or without independence, cannot honestly be described as proof of anything. It’s another opinion; how valid it is depends on how much weight you give to economic forecasts. I think somewhere around zero is about right.
@ Keith Browning
“a plan to escape from the clutches of the City of London” NOT.
A shame the Edinburgh Fringe is over for another year. I see the basis for a sketch here.
“Good Evening, Mr Salmond, can you confirm you are putting the Scots through all of this just to “escape the clutches of the City of London”?
“I see. Now perhaps you would clarify the part of your Government’s White Paper where you say you propose to leave the role of banking and monetary regulator in the hands of the Bank of England?”
*Right and if that doesn’t work I understand that your fall-back plan is to sell your oil reserves using the London futures market to buy sterling to pay the wages of your nurses, teachers etc etc?”
As plans go that must rank right up there with Tony Blair’s plans to introduce Western Liberal Democracy to Iraq.
Caron, I think you know that this is a misrepresentation of the Yes Scotland Campaign.
The issues for the Yes side on the NHS were very well set out by Jeane Freeman in her interview with Andrew Neil. I invite Lib Dem Voice members to watch.
http://youtu.be/23m6CukRUGM
You’re making a decision for the next few centuries, not the next few years. If the only arguments for staying are that about difficulties over the first few years after independence then you should vote Yes. Take a long term view.
@ Alex Dingwall
Scotland can already raise taxes to increase health spending.
For the benefit of LDV readers who do not have eight minutes to spare Jeane Freeman makes four points.
First she accepts that Scotland already has control over the shape of the NHS in Scotland. This statement has a truth value of TRUE.
Secondly she accepts that Scotland can allocate its allocation of HM Treasury funding as it sees fit. This statement has a truth value of TRUE.
Thirdly she says that Scotland can only spend money on health that has been allocated by Westminster. This statement has a truth value of FALSE. Holyrood can already raise taxes if it wishes to increase this sum of money and more taxation powers are coming.
Fourthly her last argument was that if in the future the EU signs a North Atlantic free trade agreement and if the UK government were not to exempt the NHS from some of its provisions then by some back door mechanism private firms could secure NHS work and force privatisation on Scotland [If through a contract process they were able to demonstrate they were the best people to undertake this work].
I would have thought it obvious that reducing public spending is an indirect form of privatisation given that people will have to purchase goods and services from the private sector instead as a results of the cuts to public services necessary to implement the tax cuts.
@Richard, please don’t misrepresent what she says, think party members better off watching what she says not how you re-interpret it.
@ Alex Dingwall
Well to save them time they could just listen from 06.30 to 07.30 where Jeanne Freeman twice says the money available for health spending is fixed whereas the truth of the matter is clause 73 of the Scotland Act 1998 gives Holyrood the power to raise additional taxation if it feels it needs to do so to protect services in Scotland.
A related matter, which I heard on TV last night but do not have the provenance on, i that the SNP government has deliberately expanded the NHS budget in Scotland by LESS than the fraction of the block grant increase received which was assessed by the Coalition government for the NHS provision in Scotland. Does anyone have a reference for this?
“Preying on the fears of some of the most vulnerable people in our society is completely unacceptable.” Caron, tell that to the No Campaign, the Mail, the Express, the Record, and any of the Unionist parties. I have a feeling that the polls went in favour of independence when this NHS issue gained prominence. In other words, preying on people’s fears is the way to swing a close election. Wonder what more we’ll get between now and Thursday – we’re already promised a statement from a few retailers designed to influence the vote.
@ Robin Bennett
But isn’t that the point Caron is making? The Yes campaign have been telling outright lies about the NHS being under threat if Scotland doesn’t vote Yes, when in fact Scotland already controls the NHS in Scotland. I agree that this has swung the vote, but it’s an outright lie. The SNP have been counting on confusing their voters about the extent of devolution and it’s worked.
You mention that a few retailers are likely to come up with a statement “designed to influence the vote” and I’m not sure why you do. Are you suggesting some sort of equivalence? That they’re being dishonest too in some way? The retailers surely have an interest in keeping their prices competitive and they have a right to point out if they believe that independence would threaten that.
Or do you not see the difference between offering an opinion and a deliberate falsehood?
Given the use of the potential TTIP as an attempt to justify the assertion that the NHS would be endangered by continued membership of the UK, is it not relevant that the SNP are desperate to achieve EU membership for an independent Scotland? Do they think that not only can they achieve this but that they can pick and choose what features of the EU they can opt into or out of? My own view is that those on the EU side negotiating TTIP will manage to avoid the threat to the NHS and other public services which we might all worry about but even if they don’t, members of the EU (including Scotland with or without independence) will all be in the same boat. Caron is right. This is a profoundly dishonest ploy by SNP, introduced late in the campaign after many months and many documents in which the NHS earned little or no mention.
The point about TTIP as I understand it is that individual member states can choose to opt particular sectors, in this case health, out of TTIP, but the UK is choosing not to.
There seem to be several ways in which rUK could drag Scotland along their privatising road if we vote No. It’s possible the Yes campaign are exaggerating the risks, but to call them liars is just lowering the tone of debate.
Jim and Margaret Cuthbert have written an interesting article on the threat to Scotland’s NHS if we stay in the UK.
Julian Tisi
The SNP have a stateable case – I would put it no higher – for their claim, by saying that Coalition policies on the NHS and North Atlantic Trade negotiations could have a knock-on effect on the funding and use of private contractors in the NHS. At this level it does not deserve the epithet “outright lie”, but it is scaremongering. .
Retailers would not, I hope, be lying, but by issuing statements at this time (which some others interestingly won’t) they feed the scaremongering follow-on by the press, such as today’s Mail “Families face cost of living crisis if UK splits”.
The “No” side’s claim that pensions are at risk is preying on the vulnerable, too. There is no reason why the Scottish Government cannot fund state pensions as well if not better than the UK government, while private and work pensions are matters of contract or of right, payable regardless of Independence.
And of course vulnerable people are bound to be affected by the constant refrain which has been Project Fear.
Well, the Health and Social Care bill was voted through, despite it being in neither party’s manifesto (in fact, I seem to recall some large posters saying “No more Top-Down reorganisations of the NHS). And had your party been in opposition, I’m fairly sure a good few would have voted against it. It’s a bill that was never put forward before the election, and introduced despite massive condemnation from nearly every medical organisation and wide spread public anger. Also, the risk register (remember that?) regaring the bill was never published and apparently never will. Again, had your party been in opposition, I’m fairly confident many of your MPs would have voted against it.
And so someone will say how it’s not a privatisation bill, but merely opens up the provision of healthcare to other providers if they can do it cheaper/more efficiently. Kind of like PFI, where (under labour) there were huge assumptions made on how it would be cheaper because “oh, private sector, they’re bound to be cheaper”, and then when the contract was signed the costs doubled or tripled.
But that won’t happen this time, not like there’s 223 MP’s with financial links to private healthcare companies. http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/compilation-of-parliamentary-financial.html
Of course, some of those contracts could be re-negotiated, the whole “every trust must compete with each other” thing could be re-assessed, Vodaphone could pay some tax, but that all sounds very complicated. Better to sell the whole thing to some private firm, and that way no-one will ever see the details because of commercial confidentiality. Which is exactly what you need when you’re cheering about an open and responsible health service.
Oh, and the whole “NHS funding is ring-fenced and rising” thing? The National Audit Office says no.
But what do healthcare staff know? They’ve never even worked in PR, and they don’t even have a lobbying organisation. And it’s not like they didn’t realise, the Conservatives got a majority vote after stating they’d impose massive sweeping changes to the NHS favouring private firms. Not to mention TTIP.
Oh, wait, they never got that majority and lied about the changes. And your party voted for those changes, despite the wishes of so much of your voters.
And weirdly, the Scots don’t believe your warnings about the NHS. How crazy is that???
And now Scotland has a potential 90%+ turn-out for a vote to cut themselves off from Westminster (why ever could that be?), while the UK with its 3 (for now) major parties who are all of the opinion that what the NHS needs is a lot more market forces from foreign-owned health companies (who should be attracted with massive subsidies from money taken from front-line care), and we struggle to get 30% turnout. Of which, the Lib Dems might get 7%, down from 20.
Enough people have pointed out your failures as a party. You’ve ignored them all. Your party has thoroughly earned its irrelevance.
Julian Tisi
In today’s “Sunday Herald” the former Chief Medical Officer, Sir Harry Burns, writes
While it is technically correct that control of the NHS in Scotland is currently devolved to the Scottish Parliament, the UK government is a member state of the EU and the European Commission is currently negotiating with the US a free trade agreement of unprecedented scale which will affect Scotland’s ability to control its NHS.
This is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (or TTIP). Once it has been ratified by the European Parliament, its implementation will be mandatory across all countries, including Scotland if it remains in the UK.
If agreed, TTIP is likely to give transnational companies such as American healthcare providers the legal right to bid for all government spending, including spending on health where private companies are already running those services. This is the case in England.”
Please read the full article at
http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/in-the-uk-we-face-increasing-privatisation-of-the-nhs-and-there-is-little-scotlan.25315128