UK government ‘breaking up NHS’

20 October 2011 Last updated at 19:13 ET

The health secretary will tell delegates the SNP will guard against privatisation

Scotland’s health secretary will accuse the UK government of trying to break up the NHS, in her speech to the SNP conference.

Nicola Sturgeon will tell delegates in Inverness that health service reforms in England amount to an experiment in privatisation.

Scottish ministers say they will protect NHS spending.

Deputy SNP leader Ms Sturgeon will also pledge to stop pensioners languishing in hospital beds.

The UK government’s controversial Health and Social Care Bill aims to increase competition and give clinicians control of budgets.

It says the changes are vital to help the NHS cope with the demands of an ageing population, the costs of new drugs and treatments and the impact of lifestyle factors, such as obesity.

But the legislation has already been substantially altered, following criticism from NHS staff and Liberal Democrat MPs.

Public service

Ms Sturgeon, who is also Scotland’s deputy first minister, will tell day two of the conference: “It now seems inevitable that the Tories, aided and abetted by their Liberal partners, will break up the NHS in England.

“Let me make this clear, the NHS in Scotland will remain a public service, paid for by the public and accountable to the public.

“There will be no privatisation of the NHS in Scotland.”

The health secretary will say: “I say that not out of blind ideology, though I have always thought that the ideology of a health service in public hands and free at the point of need is a rather fine one, I say it because I have no doubt that our NHS can and will outperform the privatised experiment south of the border.

“It is well known that we already have waiting times lower than at any time in the history of the NHS in Scotland.

“What is less well known is that we are now the only part of the UK where hospital waiting times continue to fall.”

Ms Sturgeon will also say hospital bed-blocking costs the NHS more than 200,000 bed days each year – enough patients to fill a 600-bed hospital, at a cost of up to £60m a year.

“We are going to cut the maximum time that it is acceptable for any older person to be delayed in hospital,” she will say.

“The target will initially reduce from six weeks to four weeks.

“By 2015, under this SNP government, no older person will be unnecessarily delayed in hospital for any longer than two weeks.”

where at the conference, BBC Scotland political editor Brian Taylor will quiz Scots Finance Secretary John Swinney in a live webcast from 10:00 to 10:30, which can be seen on the BBC news web.

He will be putting questions sent in by BBC viewers, listeners and readers to Mr Swinney.

— ’re ’s , . : A ‘Malign Intellectual Subculture’ – George Monbiot Smears Chomsky, Herman, Peterson, Pilger And Media Lens.