Editorial: ​NHS problems are largely the same around the UK

​There is a row in Scotland over allegedly unnecessary expenditure in health, that reflects UK-wide problems with the NHS – perhaps most acute here in Northern Ireland.

In the latest dispute, Scottish Labour has criticised growing spending on communications staff in the health service there, claiming that millions are being spent by the Scottish National Party government to “hide its failures”.

The party obtained freedom of information data showing the Scottish government health directorate and health boards spent more than £34 million on communications staff in the past five years.

The figures showed spending more than doubling over the period to just over £6.9 million in the last full financial year.

This is a seemingly outrageous increase in spending at a time when nearly one in six Scots are said to be on an NHS waiting list.

We know plenty about waiting lists in this province and also about political spin, in a system in which parties within the forced Stormont rainbow coalition spin against their governing partner parties. We know about excessive expenditure on communications, with so much spent on press officers for the devolved departments and other public bodies.

But the problems relating to health are fundamentally the same in all four nations in the UK. While other western nations are struggling to meet the health and care needs of an ever growing population, it is particularly apparent in Britain. We do not accept any rationing in provision. We do not accept that some things might not be best provided for free in the NHS or that any hospital units are ever so ineffecient that it might be best if they close.

This might sound admirable but isn’t. It could lead to disorganised unit-closure-by-crisis and to a creeping, undeclared privatisation, as has happened in dentistry.