Ailing Scotland gets extra £8bn to cure ills

Scotland has received an extra £8bn from the Budget for the NHS over the next five years, which is expected to move the country to the top of the league for health spending in the developed world.

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Scotland has received an extra £8bn from the Budget for the NHS over the next five years, which is expected to move the country to the top of the league for health spending in the developed world.

But people in Scotland still suffer from high levels of sickness, prompting the question: does more money improve a health system, or could it not make any difference?

By 2007 Scotland will spend 9.5 per cent of its gross domestic product on public health, a higher percentage of its national income than any of the 33 developed countries making up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

But despite a 50 per cent rise in the budget experts believe it could take 50 years before the health of the nation improves sufficiently to match that of England and the rest of Europe.

The NHS in Scotland has always been separate from the rest of Britain and has always enjoyed higher levels of funding. Yet Scotland has also suffered from poor health and higher death rates.

As a country it has the lowest life expectancy in Europe and the highest premature death rate in the UK, at 15 per cent above average compared with 10 per cent below average in south-west England.

With more deprivation there are greater health problems. Among the lowest social class, 1,300 people out of 100,000 die before they reach retirement age at 65. In the top social class, there is a death rate of only 350 per 100,000, exposing a clear divide between the haves and have-nots. The Scottish Executive already invests £5m a year, the equivalent of double the amount spent by English authorities, on media campaigns to improve the nation's health with information on smoking and diet.

On average, 19 men and nine women in Scotland out of every 100,000 get cancer compared with 12 men and six women in England. Scotland is also more sparsely populated, with many of its NHS buildings outdated and equipment either obsolete or geographically out of reach of many patients.

Dr Tony Scott, from the Health Economics Research Unit at Aberdeen University, said: "The poor health status and the remote and rural area dimension has implications for how the money is allocated across Scotland and partly explains why Scotland still has problems with its health service despite spending more money per head of population."