Scottish Labour's leaders cannot keep blaming Westminster for the collapse at the ballot box, says VINCE MILLS
IN the already inadequate parliamentary debate about the perilous state of our NHS, the discussion will rightly touch on the numbers of nurses, on the closure of wards and hospitals, ambulance waits, patients on trolleys in Accident and Emergency, waiting lists, cancer care and cancelled operations.
It will also sometimes – not often enough – include the intolerable burdens Tory cuts and policies are placing on NHS staff and the resulting risks to patients.
But it will never, or almost never, involve discussion of the government’s Integrated Care plan, even though it underpins and cements the harm done to the NHS by decades of neoliberal policies – and will lead to more and more patients not receiving the care they should.
In the second part of her critique of Wes Streeting’s TenYear Plan for Health, HELEN MERCER looks at the central planks of this privatisation blueprint
With more people dying each year and many spending their final days in institutions, researchers argue that wider access to palliative care could offer a more humane and cost-effective alternative, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
Politicians who continue to welcome contracts with US companies without considering the risks and consequences of total dependency in the years to come are undermining the raison d’etre of the NHS, argues Dr JOHN PUNTIS
Reversing outsourcing is the pre-election promise the government must honour, says Unison general secretary CHRISTINA McANEA



