Scotland Matters Letters

Jeremy Hunt will probably not please anybody in his Autumn Statement, even though his tax and spending cuts of around £50 billion are only five per cent of the Government’s total £1.1 trillion annual spend. The real way to solve the problem is economic growth and productivity. We need to get people back to work, reform the most costly public services, the NHS and education and health – and change attitudes to and expectations of what the state provides for the amount we are prepared to pay. There are 5.5 million UK citizens not available for work but on out-of-work benefits – up from 3.6m in 2018. Another 1.2m are registered unemployed and available for work – and there are 1.2m unfilled job vacancies. Since 2019 600k people have left the workforce, a loss of between £2bn and £4bn in tax and National Insurance. One of the reasons given for many people leaving employment include waiting for medical treatment for long-term illness. How can this be when, according to the BMA, inflation-corrected spending on the NHS has almost trebled since 1999 from £74bn to £193bn. And increased by a factor of 12 from £16bn in 1960? It’s a similar story with education. When I went to school in 1960 the UK spent 2% of GDP on education. It’s now around 8.5%. So we spend four times more today than when Scottish public education was the best in the world. Why has all this happened? How about a combination of us all going soft, a very human response to years of peace, actual prosperity, decline in family life, de-industrialisation, globalisation, consumerism – and a population trained to expect the Government to solve all our problems? And no moral, social or political leadership willing to spell this out, challenge us and show us the way forward, because whoever does will be eaten alive by the media and their political opponents. Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven.

Week after week we are getting dreadful reports about Scottish hospital waiting times and ambulance services in meltdown, and week after week we listen to Hume Yousaf telling us that things are going to take five years to get better. In the meantime, patients are suffering and dying as a direct result of the devolved NHS Scotland services failing to provide adequate medical services. In real terms NHS Scotland has been starved of funding by the SNP and Scotland’s healthcare standards are now well below acceptable levels. Dennis Forbes Grattan, Aberdeen.

The UK Ministry of Defence has made it clear that the break-up of the UK will end Royal Navy shipbuilding in Scotland. This is extremely relevant in light of the latest frigates contract being awarded to the Clyde. We must remember also that nationalist antagonism towards the RNs submarine force would close the Clyde bases, which employ many thousands of Scots in hi-tech jobs and supporting infrastructure. These would no doubt be relocated most likely in a welcoming north-west England. Ditto, in time, the Army and RAF bases. It would not be vindictive-ness to cancel these orders once Scotland had split. It would be doing as other countries do as a matter of course and a continuation of the eminently sensible policy of not building warships in foreign countries. And anyone who thinks that a separated Scotland would somehow or other be even a smidgen safer if the submarine bases are gone really do exist on another planet and know nothing about modern warfare. It would be the classical case cutting off the nose to spite the face. But standard procedure for this SNP/Green administration. Alexander McKay, Edinburgh.

So Health Secretary Humza Yousaf is calling in the Army to help in the ambulance workers’ strike. Would that be the British Army? Allan Bell, Edinburgh.

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