Prescription charges – We’ll stand up for the NHS when Labour and the SNP will not

Today, Scottish Conservatives are debating the issue of universal free prescriptions.

Below is the text of Derek Brownlee's speech to open the debate.

The Scottish Conservatives make no apology for returning today to a subject which Parliament has previously debated on a number of occasions.

There is a clear issue of principle around the issue of whether or not to charge some people for their prescriptions. Before I turn to that issue of principle, which is one which divides the Parliament, let me outline some areas where I think we are united.

Although the Treasury – and the Scottish Government – uses the GDP deflator of 1.9% as its estimate of inflation, inflation in healthcare costs has traditionally been assumed to run ahead of general price inflation.

A combination of an ageing population, medical advances and rising public expectations all mean that since the creation of the NHS in 1948, no Government, of any party, has managed to limit healthcare costs to inflation.

Surely,

"with the costs of healthcare rising fast, it would be wrong to say that the NHS doesn't face any financial challenges. It does."

That was of course Nicola Sturgeon when she addressed the SNP conference last month.

She was not the only one to post a bleak warning on the NHS in October, with Jackie Baillie telling her conference

"As the price of drugs rises and demand for services grows from an ageing population it will mean deep cuts in every hospital and every doctors surgery the length and breadth of Britain."

So I would have thought that the opening line of my motion – merely asking Parliament to note the financial pressures on the NHS – might have found common ground. Or common ground on the figures from the Independent Budget Review – established by the SNP Government – admittedly because we told them to. Does either the SNP or Labour dispute the £25m figure?

If they don't, why do both Labour and SNP amendments today seek to deny the funding pressures on the NHS, or the cost of abolishing prescription charges?

But back to Jackie Baillie's doom laden speech in Oban.

And the SNP are .... Cutting jobs and cutting nurses. ..... Well Labour won't stand for it. We will protect our NHS."

Labour won't stand for it.

She's right. Labour won't stand for the NHS. They won't stand up to the SNP. They will carp, and they will criticise, and then they will vote with Nicola Sturgeon anyway.

Whatever has happened to the brave soul who pronounced on the issue of abolishing prescription charges only a month ago that

"at a time when Nicola Sturgeon is cutting 4,000 health workers in Scotland including 1,500 nurses, we need to seriously consider if this is the right priority at this time".

One Jackie Baillie.

Obviously she concluded that, yes, it was the right priority at this time to cut 1,500 nurses, because by not abolishing prescription charges she could fund over an extra 1,000 nursing staff for the NHS.

But that would mean not being able to complain about the SNP cutting them. It would mean taking a position on prescription charges which might be unpopular – even if it is the same position that Labour supported in the dark days when they were in power.

It would mean standing up for the NHS. And that would never do for the only party ever to have cut the NHS.

Our argument is simple – that to take the revenue raised by prescription charges away from the NHS is the wrong choice. It is a cut imposed not by the coalition in London, but by the coalition in Edinburgh – the so called left wing parties, Labour and the SNP, taking money from the NHS and putting it into pockets of those who could afford to pay.

Because if the Cabinet Secretary was concerned only with those who are just over the income threshold, and not in an exempt group, she could have proposed raising that threshold.

If it is a central principle of the NHS that there can never be charges, when will the SNP abolish charges for dental or optical treatment? The truth is this is about one principle only – the SNP trying to get re-elected.

Let me address the concerns raised by the Cabinet Secretary in her amendment.

Abolishing prescription charges will indeed benefit those who currently pay for them, at least to the extent that they save the money which they would otherwise pay for prescriptions.

But that money comes from elsewhere in the NHS, and that has consequences.

Consequences for the poor, and consequences for the sick. Consequences about which we never hear, but consequences none the less.

If 1,000 nurses lose their jobs to pay for the abolition of prescription charges, does that help the poor or the sick?

Abolishing prescription charges takes money from the NHS. That is what this Government is doing, with Labour support.

Labour has spent the last 3 years condemning the SNP for breaking manifesto promises. It has particularly attacked the breaking of those pledges which Labour did not support.

And yet today Labour will vote to help the SNP deliver a manifesto promise with which it does not agree.

The SNP has been lucky in the incompetence of its main opposition. But Labour's failure to oppose the SNP when they are wrong will hurt the poor, hurt the sick and hurt the NHS.

That is why the Conservatives will oppose these plans. We will stand up for the NHS, even if Labour and the SNP won't.

1) Below is the text of Derek Brownlee's motion for tomorrow's debate

That the Parliament notes the financial pressures on the NHS and that the Independent Budget Review established by the Scottish Government has estimated that the full abolition of prescription charges would remove a further £25 million of income each year from the NHS, and accordingly calls on the Scottish Government to reconsider its position on prescription charges.

2) £25million per year would pay for:

Approximately 531,250 sight tests[1]Approximately 250,000 attendances to A&E[2]Approximately 107,758 MRI scans[3]Approximately 3072 admissions to intensive care[4]A 29% percent increase in GP out of hours service[5]A 63% percent increase in the community midwifery budget[6]

[1] Currently £85m is spent on 1.7m sight tests (ISD Scotland, Cost Book, 2009)

[2] Attendance at A&E costs £100 per patient (ISD Scotland, Cost Book, 2009)

[3] An MRI scan costs £232 per patient (ISD Scotland, Cost Book, 2009)

[4] Per patient admission to intensive care costs £8,137 (ISD Scotland, Cost Book, 2009)

[5] £85m per year is spent on GP out of hour services (ISD Scotland, Cost Book, 2009)

[6] £40m per year is spent on community midwifery (ISD Scotland, Cost Book, 2009)

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