SIR, I notice that in last week’s Peebleshire News that John Ross Scott is yet another Yes supporter who is trying to delude the Scottish public into believing that “the future of the NHS in Scotland can only be secured with a Yes vote”.

As a former Chairman of the BMA’s Scottish General Practitioner Committee, and Deputy Chairman of the BMA’s Scottish Council, I was in office when the “privatisation agenda” of the NHS in England commenced over 10 years ago, and we in Scotland - quite rightly in my view - decided not to go down the privatisation and competitive route and instead adopted our own more collaborative approach to the type of NHS that we in Scotland preferred.

The Devolution settlement meant that we were totally free to have a distinctly Scottish NHS without any interference from England, and it is absolute nonsense to suggest that Scotland could ever have been “sucked into the creeping privatisation agenda of health care south of the border”.

It simply could not have happened if the Scottish Government did not wish it to. We have been perfectly able to “protect” the NHS in Scotland under devolution and have the kind of NHS we wish to have, unaffected by the different health policies in England. To claim that the only way to protect the NHS in Scotland is a Yes vote is therefore demonstrably untrue.

Mr Scott alleges that privatisation south of the Border will result result in drastic cuts to the health budget in England with a consequential reduction in Scotland’s budget allocation. The actual evidence demonstrates that in over 10 years of increasing “privatisation” in England there has been no reduction in NHS spend in England or Scotland , indeed spending on Health has increased year on year in both countries.

The reality is that increasing use in England of private companies to provide NHS care is of no consequence to Scotland. These companies do not provide their services free of charge but are paid out of England’s NHS budget. As a result no savings to the NHS budget in England are made if funding is allocated to more private companies to provide NHS care - indeed it is far more likely that it will cost the NHS in England more and not less by using private providers. For the Yes campaign to suggest that there will be huge cuts to the NHS budget in England as a result of increased private sector involvement is simply untrue.

In my view by far the greatest threat to the future of the NHS in Scotland will not come from changes in the English health care system, but from the massive uncertainties surrounding Scotland’s economy and finances following independence.

I am, etc.

Dr David Love Kerfield House East Peebles