Talking-up Scotland

 From a Holyrood parliamentary question yesterday:

https://www.parliament.scot/S5ChamberOffice/WA20190603.pdf

From a question on April 27^th 2019, MSPs and state journalists were shocked to discover another area of NHS Scotland where the ‘staffing crisis’ they so confidently report, may not be real.

NHS Scotland has 771 nurses for every 100 000 people whereas NHS England has only 518 – astonishingly NHS Scotland has over 48.84% more!

For midwives, we have 45 per 100 000 whereas England has only 39 – NHS Scotland has 15% more.

Full details below:

From Holyrood parliamentary written answers for yesterday:

https://www.parliament.scot/S5ChamberOffice/WA20190603.pdf

 

 From ISD today:

• Over seven out of ten (73.6%) children and young people were seen within 18 weeks [2.5% increase and 9.8% did not attend], which compares with 72.8% in the previous quarter and 71.1% for the quarter ending March 2018.
• Across Scotland, around one in ten patients (9.8%) referred to CAMHS did not attend their first appointment
• 4,237 children and young people started treatment at CAMHS in Scotland which is a decrease from the previous quarter (4,523) and an increase [12.46%] from the same quarter ending March 2018 (3,995).

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Mental-Health/Publications/2019-06-04/2019-06-04-CAMHS-WaitingTimes-Summary.pdf

From ISD today:

• In April 2019, 40,994 days were spent in hospital by people whose discharge was delayed. This is a decrease of 1% compared with 41,453 days in April 2018.
• In April 2019, the average number of beds occupied per day due to delayed discharges was 1,366. In March, the daily average was 1,401 a fall of 2.5%.
• At the April 2019 census point, there were 1,365 people delayed. This is a decrease of 1% compared with the number of people delayed (1,380) at the census point in April 2018.

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Health-and-Social-Community-Care/Publications/2019-06-04/2019-06-04-DelayedDischarges-Summary.pdf

 

 

From a Scottish Government Freedom of Information response (requested by which opposition MSP?) published yesterday, we can see both a dramatic rise in the number of applications processed within only 21 days and yet an equally dramatic fall in the perentage taking longer. It looks like a very strong performance.

 

https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-19-01172/

So, a 125% increase in the number of applications dealt with over 6 years and yet a reduction in the percentage of applications taking longer than 21 days from 51% in 2100/2012 to only 7% in 2017/2018? Remarkable!

 

Will the Treasury gather this in and spread it around to improve life for all of us? The precedents are not good. See this from Professor Richard Murphy:

 London is giving away Scotland’s oil revenues

One way the oil companies will avoid sharing it with us

Tom Mitro, who managed Chevron’s taxation and financial planning in the North Sea in the 1990s, said [a new tax] scheme could deprive the Treasury of more than £3bn in tax over the next decade:

“Overall impact on the Exchequer of [the transferable tax history scheme] could range from virtually zero to roughly [a] £3bn [plus] reduction in tax receipts over the next 10 years depending on oil prices and [the] number of asset sales and decommissioning [of North Sea platforms and pipelines],” he said in a research paper prepared for Global Witness, the non-governmental organisation.

But why would the Treasury care? 

If it assists the spin that Scotland cannot survive on its own, I suspect that’s considered a price worth paying. And I would not be at all surprised if that is part of the political motivation for this.’

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/09/03/london-is-giving-away-scotlands-oil-revenues/

 

From Insider today:

Scotland’s fintech community has broken the ton. At the start of the 2019, it was announced by FinTech Scotland that the number of firms had trebled to 75 over the previous 12 months. That number has now broken through the 100-barrier. The growth in the number of fintech firms in the community continues to be fuelled by a combination of new enterprises being created, international firms moving to Scotland and existing technology firms developing new fintech propositions. David Ferguson, CEO of AIM listed fintech Nucleus Financials, said: “It’s hugely inspiring to see so many companies contributing to the tech-led reinvention of financial services. It’s also brilliant to see Stephen and his Fintech Scotland team doing such a great job in supporting and helping to drive this growth.” Fintech Scotland has been established by the Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, the financial services sector and University of Edinburgh to ensure that Scotland seizes the fintech opportunity and achieves critical mass in the sector by encouraging financial innovation, collaboration and inclusion as part of the country’s broader digital economy objectives.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/scottish-fintech-bursts-through-100-16223717

What Is Fintech?

Fintech is a term used to describe financial technology, an industry encompassing any kind of technology in financial services – from businesses to consumers. Fintech describes any company that provides financial services through software or other technology and includes anything from mobile payment apps to cryptocurrency.  Broadly, fintech describes any company using the internet, mobile devices, software technology or cloud services to perform or connect with financial services. Many fintech products are designed to connect consumers’ finances with technology for ease of use, although the term is also applied to business-to-business (B2B) technologies as well. 

For more detail: https://www.thestreet.com/technology/what-is-fintech-14885154

Two earlier reports on fintech in Scotland, here:

Scotland’s innovate small financial technology sector grows by 300%*

Can Edinburgh’s high-tech expertise steal some of London’s financial business post-Brexit?

 

 

 

Contrary to the headlines over years of petty and ill-informed sniping from opposition parties and the MSM, within Scotland, the personal care service here is seen as a model for adoption in Tory-abused England by the Institute for Public Policy Research.

‘While the NHS has been protected since the financial crisis, social care has faced significant funding cuts. This is having severe consequences in the sector. There has been a staggering 5 per cent drop in the number of people receiving publicly funded social care per year – totalling around 600,000 people since 2010 – despite an ageing population (Darzi 2018). The cuts are also beginning to impact on quality, particularly as a result of workforce pressures – with high turnover and huge staffing gaps. Meanwhile, provision in the sector is becoming increasingly unstable as a growing number of providers struggle to survive.’

Published on 23 May 2019, this IPPR report talks of a crisis in social care in England. There are several points at which the model developed in Scotland is mentioned as something that can be learned from. Though the report points to areas where the Scottish system can be improved, there are three comments we can take unreserved pride in:

1. Whilst the government in England rejected the recommendations made by the Royal Commission on Long Term Care for the Elderly, largely based on cost, Scotland decided to implement them. This allows us to understand how this system might work in practise.
2. Ahead of its introduction in Scotland many argued that free personal care would simply crowd-out informal care from family and friends. However, the evidence does not support this: there has been no reduction in informal care hours delivered in Scotland (Bell and Bowes 2011). Instead there is evidence that carers switched the tasks they perform from basic caring functions (eg washing or dressing) to emotional and social support (with greater flexibility about when this care was delivered). This is a particularly striking finding given that the evidence suggests that social and emotional support is the area of care in England that has suffered the most under austerity (Darzi 2018). This suggests that the introduction of free personal care could address this deficiency and significantly improve the quality of care in England.
3. However, these cost increases could be offset further by the potential efficiency savings delivered by greater integration between health and social care. Some of these can be achieved as an inherent part of the system re-design. For example, the introduction of free personal care should make NHS continuing healthcare redundant which IPPR calculated could deliver an annual saving of up to £2 billion per annum rising to £3.3 billion by 2031 (see info box).4 There could be savings on attendance allowance (if it only becomes accessible to people in their own home as in Scotland).

https://www.ippr.org/files/2019-05/social-care-free-at-the-point-of-need-may-19.pdf

I can’t seem to access the 2019 report mentioned above (send me it if you can) but their 2018 research report on better health and care seems worth a revisit to see what they had to say about the situation in Scotland, comparatively, and due to Scottish Government action:

1. Progress on smoking can be maintained by extending smoke free areas onto our highstreets and parks alongside other public places. England should also step up action to address alcohol consumption by following Scotland’s lead and introducing a minimum price on alcohol (BMJ 2017b). Analysis shows that a 50p minimum unit price could reduce alcohol-related deaths by over a 1,000 and save £1.1 billion in costs over a five-year period (Foundation for Liver Research 2017).

2. Whichever way you look at it, the case for comprehensive funding and reform of social care is unassailable. Investment in social care makes good sense. If social care were a medicine, it would be NICE approved. Moreover, it is the right thing to do for elderly people and their families. Society as a whole must confront the challenge and embrace bold reform. Recent years have seen multiple proposals for reform. These include: free personal social and nursing care – as in Scotland (Barker 2014).

4. Free personal and nursing care promotes investment in prevention and reduces frictional costs. This would create a more coherent and logical system (for example, creating parity of esteem between conditions such as cancer and dementia). But it would also allow for better integration of care. For example, Scotland’s experience suggests that it can help move care into the community and reduce frictions such as delayed transfers of care (Bell et al 2013).
5. The possibility of free personal social care reducing cost elsewhere in the system is borne out by evidence from Scotland, where increased spending on social care has resulted in lower spending overall on health and care for older people (Bell et al 2013).

https://www.ippr.org/files/2018-06/better-health-and-care-for-all-june2018.pdf

 

Another wee drip on the stone of perceptions of the ways in which Scotland might be just a bit more collectivist (better) than rUK.

From Third Force News on 27th May:

‘Recruiters say Scottish charity bosses earn around 9% less than their UK counterparts. Recruitment firm BTA found that the average charity chief executive in Scotland earned £47,500, compared with £52,000 across the UK. The firm analysed job adverts over two years to compile its Scottish Charity Workforce Salary Survey ahead of the full report being published next month.

https://thirdforcenews.org.uk/tfn-news/overpaid-charity-bosses-not-in-scotland-research-reveals

Are Scotland’s employers also different – more willing to pay a decent wage?

Another step on the way to becoming a ‘Living Wage Nation’ and a ‘Better Nation?’

With 1 in 4 living wage employers already in Scotland, the Scottish Government aims to make this a ‘Living Wage Nation’

8% of the UK population and 28% of living wage employers. More evidence that we are different enough to want to run the whole show?

80 000 lowest paid workers in NHS England still on poverty wages as NHS Scotland follows Scottish Government policy to pay a living wage to all public-sector employees

Scottish care workers to receive Living Wage for ‘sleepover’ hours while English care workers receive only the National Minimum Wage.

At 78% level of satisfaction with NHS Scotland is impressive 36% higher than for the NHS across UK

UK Government urged to follow Scotland’s praised lead on employee ownership – another 8% story?

8% of the population but 11.8% of the charitable donations – ‘punching above our weight?’

8% of the UK population and 28% of living wage employers. More evidence that we are different enough to want to run the whole show?