Austerity capitalism stealing years off our lives

By Matt Dobson

The recent National Records of Scotland (NRS) figures on healthy life expectancy (HLE) are yet another indicator of the social crisis in working-class communities.

The average number of years Scots can expect to live in good health has dropped in every council area. While the gap is wider than ever between affluent and poor areas.

The HLE measure (pre-Covid) for 2017-19 shows males in Scotland can expect to live in good health for an average of 61.7 years from birth while for females it is 61.9 years.

In Glasgow average HLE has fallen to 54.6 years for males. Outside the city, in the wealthy suburbs of East Dunbartonshire males have an HLE of 69.8 years.

For females, healthy life expectancy was highest in rural island Orkney at 75.1 years and lowest in deindustrialised North Ayrshire at 56.3 years.

Overall life expectancy for males is lowest in Glasgow, but this area is also the lowest in Western Europe according to NRS figures from September 2020.

That report also starkly showed that the overall fall in life expectancy in Scotland can be related to the onset of the Tories vicious austerity program, passed on in devolved government and councils by the SNP and Labour. Life expectancy was rising nationally on average until 2012.

Working class people are only too aware of why they are losing family members too early. The causes are well documented; the economic and social devastation inflicted by neoliberal capitalism over the last four decades is the cause of poverty, unemployment and underemployment, low wages and starvation level benefits.

Many social symptoms are experienced on a daily basis, such as the ongoing drug death epidemic with a death rate that’s the highest in Europe.

The impact of the pandemic, with the failures of the Tories and the SNP, will only accelerate this.

Glasgow and Edinburgh universities showed in December in 2020 that those from poorer areas of Scotland had a significantly smaller chance of surviving the virus once admitted to hospital, and even accessing ICU services due to the pressures on the NHS.

Capitalism has failed, we need a socialist alternative.

The Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition is uniquely offering that socialist alternative for the forthcoming election. Our policies to deal with this health and social emergency include:

• The setting of emergency no cuts budgets by the Scottish government and councils utilising their powers. cancellation of debt, income taxation of big business and the wealthy, reserves, underspends and Covid funds to end austerity

• Build a mass campaign mobilising the trade unions and working class communities to demand the billions stolen by Tory cuts and for democratic rights and a second independence referendum

• For immediate and emergency mass public investment to fully meet the needs of our NHS and all public services by the Scottish and Westminster governments

• Bring the whole care sector under public ownership

• End expensive PFI/PPP contracts and nationalise the pharmaceutical companies under democratic workers’ control

• The SNP government and councils should defy the Tories and implement harm reduction measures to deal with drug addiction.

• Mitigate benefit sanctions and top-up universal credit if the Tories cut the £20 a week pandemic payment. We need a fully funded, fair social security system, scrap work capability assessments by the private sector, raise the level of benefits in line with wages. Raise the child payment from £10 to £50 a week.

• For a immediate increase in the minimum wage to £12 an hour, scrap zero hour contracts. If workers have to be furloughed they must be on full pay. For a 15% pay rise for carers and key workers.

• For a massive public works and job creation scheme, for a socialist green economic strategy including the building of 100,000 high quality council homes.

• For a socialist society planned democratically by the working class for the needs of the majority. Bring the major corporations and banks under public ownership

• Build a new mass workers’ party 

• For an independent socialist Scotland and a voluntary democratic confederation with a socialist England, Wales and Ireland