Anas Sarwar has accused Reform UK leader Nigel Farage of backing “disastrous” plans to replace the NHS with an insurance system. The Scottish Labour chief said voters would reject any model that required patients to pay for their operations and treatment.
But he also said he understands why people are moving to parties like Reform and insisted he would not turn his back on them: “My door is open to every single Scot.”
Reform are growing in support in Scotland and a recent poll estimates they could return 15 MSPs at the Holyrood election. Farage’s right-wing, anti-immigration party is taking votes off the Tories but Labour insiders concede they are also eating into their support.
Speaking to the Record, Sarwar took aim at Farage’s repeated support for ditching a health system free at the point of need for everyone.
The MP said recently: “I was given almost pariah status for suggesting the NHS model isn’t working. I haven’t shifted my position. We’ve got to identify a system of funding for healthcare that is more effective than the one we have currently got, and at the same time carries those who can’t afford to pay.”
He also said over a decade ago: “I think we’re going to have to think about healthcare very, very differently. I think we are going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare.
Sarwar said: “The idea that somehow a political party that advocates breaking the principle of the NHS, making it a private insurance scheme where people are having to mortgage their homes, take out huge loans in order to get the most basic of health treatment, is not a model that we want to see here in Scotland and I don’t think would be accepted by the Scottish people.”
“If you do want change in our national health service, if you do want it to go in a new direction, if you do want to make sure it is there when you need it, Reform is not the answer.”
He said of an insurance system: “I think that would be disastrous. I think the greatest social policy gain in the history of our country was the creation of a National Health Service, where a service was made available based on need rather than the ability to pay. That’s where the proposals of Nigel Farage would take us to – an NHS that’s based on the ability to pay.”
More broadly, Sarwar said he is determined to address the issues that are resulting in the rise of Reform: “The reason why people are being driven to these political parties, or these individuals, is not because they believe those individuals have the answers. It’s because they believe the system is rigged against them.
“They believe that government doesn’t work for them. They think the economy is broken. They think our public services are broken, and the best they think they can have is the continued managed decline of our nation.
“What I want to do is demonstrate to people that things can get better.”
He said he understands the anger that is driving people to divisive parties: “The way we get those people back is not by insulting them, not by claiming that somehow they don’t understand, or that they are stupid, or that they are racist, or that they don’t care.
“The vast, vast majority of people care about our country, love our country, want things to get better, care about bringing our country and our communities closer together, but a lot of them have lost hope in our politics. That’s what I am going to confront.”
Sarwar said he had reached out to pro-independence voters and will do the same for every voter: “I am not going to turn my back on people that voted for Brexit even though I have a different view than them on the damage done right across the UK by us leaving the European Union.
“And neither am I going to turn my back on anyone that might be tempted to vote for another political party, whether that be the SNP, whether it be the Liberal Democrats, whether it be the Scottish Conservatives, whether it be Reform.”
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