SCOTLAND has no detailed plans as to how it will cope with the predicted onslaught of pressures on crucial frontline services, one of the country’s most influential figures in public policy has warned.
Former NHS chairman and academic Sir John Arbuthnott said he feared the public sector was little further forward in equipping itself against the biggest challenges on services such as care, health and education than it was at the end of the last decade.
Sir John, whose reviews shaped how health is funded in Scotland, as well its voting systems and electoral map, also warned against waiting for future powers and constitutional changes before tackling the squeeze on services.
Leading experts in the public sector have warned that local government alone faces a financial blackhole of around £1 billion in the next few years, impacting on core services and thousands of jobs.
Sir John, who also signed the contract which delivered the flagship new hospital in Glasgow, was speaking ahead of an event in Edinburgh discussing the future of public services in post-referendum Scotland.
The former President of The Royal Society of Edinburgh and Strathclyde University principal was also speaking ahead of the publication of a book on his decades in public life.
‘Breaking The Mould’ charts his involvement in managing Trinity College in Dublin through to his report on the salmonella outbreak of the late 1980s to his work on the issues surrounding last year’s independence referendum.
Despite his pivotal role in many key areas of Scottish public life, his efforts to overhaul local government and parts of the health service in the west of Scotland in the immediate aftermath of the global economic collapse floundered.
With deeper cuts on the horizon, Sir John has again warned of the urgency facing policymakers.
He said: “What we’re saying now we were saying six years ago and still we have to ask questions about how our services are going to work and how they will be sustainable.
“We still need to get a firmer idea of what the plan is, how it will be funded and how it is going to affect different people within different levels of society. There are unanswered questions.
“All politicians are encouraging and optimistic but then you ask: where are the bones on how we are facing up to population changes and the demands of an older population? Let’s see a firmer picture.”
Sir John pointed to his 13 years in the Irish Republic until the late 1980s as an example of how countries and their priorities can change in a relatively short space of time.
But while he said he understood the attraction of the main political dynamics in Scotland at present, policymakers had to work with the powers they had at present.
He added: “The politics of the day are about the extent to which Scotland is progressing towards more and perhaps eventual independence.
"The attraction of the SNP way of thinking is very strong. It’s a constitutional issue which has been around for centuries and is bound to have an emotional and fundamentally Scottish attraction.
“We have many levers and regardless of the progression or otherwise of the constitutional issue we have to have a workable system that can deliver services with the tools we have.”
From a working-class background in Glasgow, Sir John’s academic career started as a microbiologist, progressing to his time as chairman of NHS Greater Glasgow during its biggest overhaul in a generation.
Also speaking at the Festival of Politics event with Sir John are scientist Professor Hugh Pennington, General Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Professor Alan Alexander, Professor Jo Armstrong, economist and Dr John Gillies, past Chair of Royal College of GPs.
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