An end to a tax on ill health

The New Year was welcomed up and down Scotland in spectacular fashion. But the start of 2009 will have been particularly welcomed by hospital workers, patients and their relatives in most of Scotland’s hospitals, with the abolition of hospital car parking charges.

The SNP has made clear that it regards hospital parking charges as a tax on ill-health, something that is unacceptable in an NHS that runs on the principle of delivering healthcare free at the point of delivery. That is why we moved quickly to put money in place to cap hospital car parking charges at £3 per day last year ahead of their abolition this year.

Staff, patients and their visitors will no longer face a heavy financial burden if they need to park their car regularly in a hospital car park. In these difficult economic times, the abolition of this charge is helping to put more money back into ordinary people’s pockets.

Sadly, however, it has not been possible to extend this to every hospital in Scotland. Car parking facilities at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Glasgow Royal Infirmary and Ninewells Hospital in Dundee are run privately as part of PFI schemes, and abolishing parking charges there would have meant diverting tens of millions of pounds from frontline healthcare to buy out these long term private contracts. People attending these hospitals are paying the unfortunate price of Labour’s ruinous obsession with PFI.

PFI has lumbered hard working Scots with incredible levels of long term debt that will eat into the Scottish budget year after year. The UK’s PFI debt has reached a staggering total of £216 billion, which the Treasury tries to bury in an online appendix of their reports in a way no private company would be allowed to.

It is ordinary taxpayers who have lost out as a result of this discredited way of doing business, with private companies making vast profits out of the public sector. Working with the private sector to complete public projects is in itself no bad thing, but the credit-card financing arrangements used by Labour to pay for these projects has been a shocking misjudgement that we are now only beginning to pay the price for.

People in Banff & Buchan and across Scotland can rest assured that the SNP Government will not repeat the mistakes of our predecessors that mean we will be paying back PFI debts at high rates of interest for a generation. Value for taxpayer money must be the overriding concern for Government projects, and the Scottish Government will not cease to pursue this.

Action on personal debt

Sadly it is not only governments that must face problems caused by debt. Ordinary people up and down the country are struggling to cope with their personal debts, a problem that has only been exacerbated by worsening economic conditions.

The Scottish Government is determined to do what it can to help families who are suffering as a result of debt. We have established the Debt Action Forum to draw up a package of legislative and non-legislative action to help people cope with debt, and to examine safeguards to protect homes from the threat of repossession.

Community Safety Minister Fergus Ewing has also announced improvements to the Debt Arrangement Scheme, whereby people who are able to pay back their debts but require some breathing room will be able to do so over a longer period without the threat of legal action. I am sure that people struggling with debt will welcome this action as warmly as I do.