The Welsh yardstick
ALL of the General Election TV debates to date that have included the SNP have gravitated (or been led by the host or pre-selected audience member questions) to discussion of devolved matters such as the NHS and education. Yet, the only yardstick for measuring the SNP Scottish Government’s performance in devolved matters, the Labour Welsh Government’s performance, has barely been mentioned.
One in five people in Wales are currently on an NHS waiting list which is equivalent to 40 per cent more possible patients than in Scotland where the ratio is one in seven. While the UK’S recent PISA scores have dropped (lowest levels in maths and science since 2006), Wales, which is not pursuing the broader aims of Curriculum for Excellence and is more focused on test results, is at the bottom of the UK rankings in all three measures of maths, science and reading. Across the UK public services are broken and even local council services are failing with a number of council authorities in England, including its second-largest city Birmingham, effectively bankrupt.
The use of food banks has exploded across the UK and while the Scottish Government has sought to mitigate the worst impacts of austerity and has lifted tens of thousands of children out of poverty an incoming Labour Government at Westminster, avowedly bound to the Tories’ fiscal rules, will prolong austerity. Regardless of what Anas Sarwar attempts to dupe Scottish voters into believing, Keir Starmer himself has declared that it will probably take at least two terms of government (10 years) to “fix the mess the Tories have made”.
There is a better way forward, particularly for the people of Scotland, via serious constitutional reform.
Stan Grodynski, Longniddry.