SNP must hear England's wake-up call that NHS, free at point of care, is at risk

The service which has done so much for so many of us, led the way in provision of so many treatments and saved so many lives, is now itself in a critical condition. And while there are those who will point to the differences between the service here and south of the Border, Lord Darzi’s recent report should be a wake-up call for all of us.

Now we need to be realistic about matching that resolve in Scotland. We have the same issues with unacceptable waiting lists and ambulance waiting times, and a higher number of drugs deaths. On doorsteps across Scotland, the plea to do something about the NHS was surely the most common in the recent general election.

Listening to UK Government Health Secretary Wes Streeting outline the challenges facing health staff like the constant search for beds, the lack of resources and shortage of GPs, it was a tale with which all of us in Scotland are only too familiar.

Scotland’s NHS is the same as England’s, born from the same principles, developed the same way, and now struggling to survive. The impact of the pandemic on healthcare here was as severe and the burden our frontline health workers have had to carry just as heavy.

The prescription which Wes Streeting offers in England will involve switching from outmoded technology to new systems. It will bring testing facilities into the High Street with people cared for in their own homes. He talks of a NHS which is a neighbourhood health service with a greater emphasis on prevention, education about healthy lifestyles, and restriction on junk food advertising.

But perhaps the elephant in the room was the lack of any meaningful plan for social care to free up hospital beds. Without that it’s difficult to see how any reform can be effective if too many people are stuck in hospital, healthy enough to leave but with no social care packages to let them.

Hopefully those details will come soon as will, ultimately, legislation to address the failings outlined by Lord Darzi. There will be many questions for the UK Government to answer from the medical profession, public and politicians before we can all be sure whether this time the reforms will work.

But our government here in Scotland mustn’t waste time. They must pick up the gauntlet that Labour has thrown down, take a cross-party, collaborative approach and listen to frontline medical professionals. For too long our NHS has been used as a electioneering weapon when our medical and social care staff and the public deserve so much better.

Now that Lord Darzi has opened Pandora’s box, we have to tackle the troubles revealed if we are to preserve a health service free at the point of care. On this issue perhaps more than any other we need our governments to work together and to do it now.

Before it’s too late to save the NHS.

Christine Jardine is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West