Why Chancellor Rachel Reeves should be eternally ashamed of what she’s done to hospices

Two weeks ago, she was admitted to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) when a carer became concerned, but even though no treatment was needed, it took four days for her to be discharged. Two days later, another carer called for an ambulance fearing she was unwell, not realising her temperature was probably caused by the Covid/flu jab she’d had the day before, so it was back to the QEUH.

We received a call on Sunday to say she was moving from the reception unit to a different ward so we went straight there. No one of that name here, said the nurse, so it was back to the reception unit. No, she’s not here, said the next nurse, she’s definitely where you’ve just been because she went an hour ago and we’ve sent her notes.

Several frantic phone calls and furrowed brows later, it was confirmed she had arrived so we trooped back and the first nurse apologised, explaining with a friendly shrug of the shoulders she didn’t know my mum was on the ward because she’d been on her break. Really sorry, nothing critical, no harm done. It’s just the way it is.

Don’t get ill

But just the way it is won’t cut it any more. In March, Public Health Scotland reported over 690,000 waits for appointments or non-urgent treatment, 85,000 delays of over a year to start treatment or for an outpatient appointment, and an appalling 8,000 delays of over two years.

In-patient treatment waiting times rose by 5.8 per cent from last year, so whatever the Scottish Government is trying to do about it ─ and it claims to have spent around £30 million on tackling waiting lists ─ it clearly isn’t working. For cancer sufferers, just under 30 per cent of patients were kept waiting longer than the 62-day standard for their treatment to start, and that doesn’t include the time taken to reach a diagnosis. The best advice is don’t fall ill.

Even if you’re lucky enough to get to your 80s, that’s hardly an option. Personal trainers love those graphs which show the ideal life, where you have long years of good health and then a very sharp decline and even sharper exit, but the reality is somewhat different.

According to 2021 data, even in the most affluent areas, men will spend an average of 11 years in ill-health before death at 82, and women 13 ailing years before departing at 85. Who knows what difference the proposed legalisation of assisted dying will make to these numbers.

People in the most deprived areas of Scotland ─ no personal trainers for them ─ will live more than 50 per cent of their lives in poor health. Men will only have an average of 45 years of healthy life, followed by nearly 24 years of decline, and for women it’s 47.4 healthy years and 27.6 years of illness.

Care home staff quitting

The epidemic of drug and alcohol addiction, with the worst death rate in Western Europe, is a contributor to these figures but that’s only the tip of a massive iceberg of social and health problems as a straining system tries to stop the figures worsening. QEUH visits usually involve sharing a lift with crumpled, toothless husks of people looking like candidates for next year’s data.

Whichever way you cut it, the NHS and care services must treat a lot of very poorly people for a very long time, including an estimated 90,000 with dementia, according to latest Scottish Government figures.

A third of sufferers are in care homes, making up two-thirds of their residents, with the system on its knees as the population ages, while the number of workers willing and able to look after them, and who are prepared to be paid buttons, diminishes at a similar rate. Last year, a Strathclyde University study for the Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland revealed a significant rise in staff turnover, but 52 per cent of those changing jobs left the sector altogether.

It's not that nothing is being done because there are enough initiatives and strategies to sink a battleship, but the statistics relentlessly go in the wrong direction. More money will be coming north because of the cash injection from the Labour Budget, but if just swallowed by pay deals it will make no difference.

‘Moral necessity’

Thankfully it looks like the SNP is shelving its national care service plan, an exercise in bureaucratic deckchair arranging for a crisis needing immediate action, not least because care charities, like those looking after my mum, must foot the bill for the rise in employers’ National Insurance contributions.

In her zeal to force private business to fund health sector pay deals, Chancellor Rachel Reeves also whacked a vast army of private operations and charities which keep the NHS from collapse and she should be eternally ashamed that hospices say they will have to turn dying people away because of the tax rise. Opponents of assisted dying say what’s needed is better palliative care, while Ms Reeves gives those very providers the tax equivalent of a beaker of barbiturates.

Meanwhile her colleague Wes Streeting’s answer is league tables and sacking managers, as if the NHS is some sort of football competition. There is a “moral necessity to get better value for money out of the health service”, said the Health Secretary, but as all football players know, the easiest way to get the manager sacked is to stop trying.