THE Conservative Government is scapegoating GPs for problems the Government has caused itself.
Most of the councils’ budgets come from national government. With the Conservatives cutting these since 2010, social care budgets in England and Wales were cut by one-third between 2010 and 2015. And cuts have continued since 2015
This means less carers for elderly and disabled people, some of whom need 24 hour care. So they end up being sent to A & E and put in hospital beds, because there’s nowhere else left they’ll get care.
Add to this a rising proportion of elderly people in the population, who require more NHS treatment; and continual breakthroughs allowing new treatments that weren’t available before.
There are those who claim the NHS needing more funding every year shows it’s a failed model. Any healthcare system that ensured no-one was denied necessary treatment, facing the same issues, would require the same funding increases though.
Rather than provide the necessary funding to deal with these issues, the Government’s increases in NHS spending have been the lowest ever. The King’s Fund found the 2010 to 2015 Coalition Government’s increase in NHS spending at 0.84 per cent a year was the lowest of any government since 1945.
The Health Foundation found Chancellor George Osborne cut public health spending by 20 per cent while boasting of no NHS spending cuts, by using a very narrow definition of “NHS spending” that excluded things like training for junior doctors.
Any overall cuts in UK government spending reduce the Scottish Government’s budget through the Barnett formula.
Dr Peter Bennie (“NHS at breaking point”, The Herald, January 16 is right that funding is not keeping pace with demand on the NHS in Scotland either. But again the Conservative Government is the main culprit.
Duncan McFarlane,
Beanshields, Braidwood, Carluke.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here