Euan McColm: Is it time for a political truce on the NHS?

Three days earlier, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar had unveiled his party’s manifesto, the central plank of which was a promise to improve the NHS. A former dentist, Sarwar said the state of the health service was personal for him.

Since the dawn of devolution in 1999, the SNP and Labour have fought to be seen as rightful custodians of the national health service. Each election campaign brings new promises. There will be more doctors and nurses, there will be a cull of unnecessary bureaucracy, there will be investment in the latest technology.

And all the while, these political opponents have engaged in a reckless Dutch auction on the matter of waiting times, undercutting each other with increasingly undeliverable promises of ever-quicker treatment.

Despite all this political attention, Scotland’s NHS is in crisis. That is not a partisan political point nor a mere matter of opinion but a fact, borne out by the

Government’s own statistics on waiting times for treatment and the testimony of frontline health workers and patients alike.

This being so, it may be that voters would have considerably more confidence in the First Minister’s ability to mould an NHS fit for the future if he was currently providing one fit for the present. As it is, medical bodies such as the Royal College of Surgeons and The British Medical Association are among those to have raised serious concerns about the parlous state of the health service in Scotland .

In a manifesto published last week, the BMA said “radical reform” was needed to secure the NHS’s future.

Wise to the games of politicians, BMA Scotland chair Dr Iain Kennedy said his organisation was clear that the service must not be seen simply as a way of winning votes rather than something that requires care and investment.

“Too often,” he said, “solutions offered to the problems the health service faces do no more than tinker at the edges or seek to grab attention rather than deliver real results”.

For another two and a half weeks, all of the parties competing in this year’s election will continue to lavish praise on the NHS and to promise that they – and only they – may be trusted to ensure that it will improve and endure.

And then, when the election is over, business will return to normal and the health service will remain an issue of huge concern.

And nothing will change. Post May 7, the NHS will remain at the centre of a grinding war of attrition between opposing political parties until, come the next General Election in three years or so, they all begin again to promise change that will not come.

When it comes to the need for NHS reform, the relentless election cycle does not help matters. With Scottish voters going to the polls so frequently, there’s a barely a moment when political parties are not in full campaign mode. Add to this a relentless stream of stories of NHS failure, each of which demands political attention, and it is hardly surprising that there can be no calm discussion of how the service may be improved.

Polls currently suggest that John Swinney is leading the SNP to its fifth consecutive Holyrood victory. Those same polls have Anas Sarwar’s Labour and Reform, under Malcolm Offord, slugging it out for second place.

While the result of that particular play-off remains unknown, we may be certain that the presence of a substantial number of Reform MSPs in Holyrood will not lower the temperature in the debating chamber.

In the next parliamentary session, with populists on the nationalist left and right tearing chunks out of each other, there may be a role for Labour in bringing focus to the NHS.

Were I Anas Sarwar, I would stand up at the first, post-election, session of First Minister’s Question Time and begin not with an attack but an offer.

I would tell John Swinney that the NHS was too important for it to be used as a political football. I would tell him that, while, every single MSP has scores of constituents who’ve had the most wonderful experiences of health care, they also represent a great many people who have been failed by the service.

And I would offer a truce on the subject.

Independence is now off the table for the foreseeable future. That should give MSPs on both sides of the constitutional divide space to breathe.

Mightn’t it be possible, in the absence of a row over Indyref2, for opponents to work together on addressing the demands of the NHS?

When the NHS was founded in 1948, life expectancy for men was 66 and for women it was 70. Now, men are expected to live, on average, for 80 years and women to reach 83.

This is a trend that will continue and that expanding elderly population will only mean ever more pressure on a health service that’s already straining to bursting point.

Currently, the leaders of all of our major political parties pretend they can provide an NHS fit-for-purpose without discussing how we fund it. When some foolish soul dares suggest some innovation – means testing in some areas, for example – they are shouted down, accused of attacking the service and its staff.

If we are to have an NHS that works for everyone, there has be honest discussion about cost. MSPs need to be able to look at every possibility – even the taboo of introducing some sort of private insurance – without fear of being pilloried.

Scotland’s NHS is on the brink of collapse. It’s time for political opponents to down their weapons.