Two nations - and the gap between is widening

between our two nations been spelt out in starker or more challenging

detail.

I refer of course to the article by Dr Harry Burns, director of public

health for Greater Glasgow Health Board, who wrote in advance of the

Panorama programme about the life prospects of those who are born into

Drumchapel and their counterparts who grow up a few hundred yards away

in Bearsden.

Two nations indeed, and the ultimate challenge in politics is to merge

them into one by breaking down the prison gates of poverty and creating

decent levels of opportunity for all.

There is nothing trite about aspiration, any more than there is a

magic formula to achieve it. What I believe the overwhelming majority of

society expects is that there should be a steady journey towards it. The

tragedy which this week's coverage exposed is that we are now actually

moving in the other direction.

As the programme made clear, the two nations are to be found -- pink

cheek by hollow jowl -- throughout Britain. The statistics from Teesside

were similar to those from Glasgow, and could be repeated throughout the

land. For the first time since public health was recognised as a

responsibility of the State, life expectancy for many poor people

actually decreased during the 1980s.

Harry Burns pointed out that a new-born baby leaving hospital today to

go home to Drumchapel might expect to die seven or 10 years sooner than

the baby in the next cot who is going home to Bearsden.

I thought about that statistic a lot this week, since I was going in

and out of Yorkhill, where our own little boy was having an operation.

Each time I was required to pass the benign countenance of Mrs Joan

Cameron, chairwoman of the Yorkhill NHS Trust on #25,000 a year by sole

dint of being a Bearsden Tory. That's what's called rubbing salt in the

wound.

It is not difficult to observe the evidence of what Harry Burns is

talking about in an NHS children's hospital which draws its clientele

from such a varied catchment area. The strain and struggle of living on

next to nothing shows through in some very young faces; more so in their

parents.

Denial of reality is almost as offensive as the reality itself. On

Panorama we had Gerry Malone mouthing the platitudes and denials on

behalf of Government. Mr Malone has spent most of his life in Glasgow.

His wife is a GP. Yet here he was, babbling obfuscations about the

complex reasons for poor health and low life expectancy.

Look in the mirror, Gerry, and ask what state of health you would be

in if you were required to live for a week and bring up a couple of kids

on the cost of an average West End meal.

Bang on cue he was followed into the ring by the space cadet who

masquerades as Secretary of State for Wales, John Redwood. It was all

the fault of left-wing media types who make programmes like Panorama.

With all the credibility of a man disputing the invention of the wheel,

Mr Redwood sturdily denied a link between poverty and ill health.

The indictment of the Tory years is not that they have failed to

bridge the wealth gap but that they have consciously set out to widen

and consolidate it. That is not the rhetoric of politics but the

inescapable evidence of the chnages which have been made in the taxation

system.

Boardroom greed is a mere addendum to the means by which the rich have

become richer; although recent revelations confirm that the more these

people are given the more they will seek to take to themselves. The

major redistribution of wealth has been achieved through abolition of

upper tax rates while those at the bottom have seen benefits squeezed.

Between 1979 and the early nineties, the bottom 20% of the population

saw their incomes drop by 12% in real terms after housing costs, while

the incomes of the top 20% increased by 49%; much more as you go further

up the scale. Even these percentages do not begin to explain the

disparity in cash terms.

Every sinew of government should be committed to creating employment

and getting people out of the benefit stranglehold. But if

representatives of government deny that there is even a link between

poverty and either health or crime -- as they equally do -- then how on

earth can they be expected to make that fundamental commitment? To do so

would be to deny their own denials.

This is the great debate of British/Scottish/Glasgow/ Teesside

politics, and it is high time that it was given its proper place. People

without jobs, money, or hope do not only die younger. Many of them also

take such measures as are at their disposal to alleviate their position

while they are alive. That is one more reason why there can be no real

border of awareness between Drumchapel and Bearsden.

Immediately after Panorama had given some rare exposure to the Great

Debate, two politicians argued with passion and conviction about matters

relating to the constitution. Perhaps their argument could be boiled

down to two questions, for socialists at least: Were the statistics from

Teesside any less distressing than the ones from Greater Glasgow, and

would it not be better to channel our political energies, together, to

transform both?