Gordon Brown warns of NHS crisis in letter to Scottish voters

Gordon Brown has warned “the NHS in Scotland is currently in crisis” in a letter going out to 350,000 Scottish voters today.

The former PM writes that his family “owes a great deal” to the NHS, and that only Labour will protect the health service in Scotland. He lays out Scottish Labour’s plans to but an extra £1bn of funding into the Scottish NHS, which will pay for an extra 1,000 nurses and 500 GPs. He also warned about the effects of the SNP’s spending plans for the first year of the parliament:

“The SNP’s own spending plans for the UK confirm that next year they would not spend a single penny more than the Tories. And the nationalists would scrap the Barnett formula, meaning that our NHS and other public services could only be funded by taxes raised in Scotland. That would mean additional cuts of £7.6 billion to the services we all rely on.

“The Labour Party created the NHS. We built the NHS. And we have always ensured that it has been fully funded.”

You can read the full letter below:

Gordon Brown Letter

Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy will also warn against the SNP’s economic policy, saying that there is now only two weeks to save Scotland from the Nationalists’ plans for full fiscal autonomy. At a street meeting this morning, he will say that the move would put pensions at risk:

“Nearly one million Scots who have worked hard all their lives deserve to enjoy their retirement in the knowledge that their state pension won’t be put at risk.

“The SNP manifesto might have changed the name of their plan but it amounts to the same thing – eye watering cuts that would see the end of the UK state pension in Scotland and put the NHS at risk.”

Murphy also plans to condemn the Tory strategy for talking up the threat of the SNP, accusing David Cameron of “playing with fire” – a sentiment echoed by Gordon Brown at a meeting in Fife last night.

Brown said that the only strategy the Tories had left was to stir up division: “The only way they can win is to build resentment in Scotland of the English and resentment in England of Scots.”