Independence debate Continued »
Scottish Parliament, we are still regulated by the GDC. Many of us may have concerns about the GDC. We might be concerned that the GDC is more interested in pros- ecuting dentists for selling the wrong diameter of floss than hairdressers doing tooth whitening. But who is going to be governing us come independence? The reality is that we don’t know. Like so many other things about independence, there is uncertainty, no answers. “I was speaking to a couple of the lab
guys here today and they are doing a lot of work in England. England is the biggest domestic market for Scottish labs and they are really concerned that they are going to lose out after independence. That’s going to be a threat to jobs in dental labs and that’s just one example of how independence is going to put jobs at risk. “I think these are unnecessary risks. At
the moment we have the security of being part of a strong United Kingdom, one of the biggest economies in the world and the benefits of having the control over our domestic affairs through a Scottish Parliament. “I don’t want to gamble with our
currency, I don’t want to put jobs at risk and I don’t want our pensions to be threatened. I believe that dentistry, our patients and our nation as a whole is Better Together as part of the United Kingdom and I would ask you to vote No today and in September.”
Willie Wilson: “I lectured for 30 years on dental pharmacology, which is one of the reasons I am here. But really, the most relevant things that I can share with you are to do with my career as a pharmacist. “Community pharmacy has close
connections with dentistry and optometry in the sense that we are all contractors to the NHS. We are operating as businesses on the periphery of the NHS. The two key points about that are that we are held in very tight contracts so that the contracts do not allow competition in the sense that is now experienced in England. And the other clear point is that financially we are absolutely dependent on the NHS for funding. “In terms of remuneration, if you stand
back and look over the whole NHS, it is reasonable that prosperous people like dentists and pharmacists and so on should bear a bit more pain than the nurses and the lower paid staff. And that is one of the things that the Scottish Government has done. It may leave a bad taste, but that is what they have done. Considering the
36 Scottish Dental magazine Willie Wilson
NHS in general over 40 years, Scotland and England have diverged tremendously. In England you have privatisation. Commercialisation is going ahead quite rapidly and competition is the watch word. They no longer have patients in England, they have customers. “There is rationing of treatment, both
at GP level and in hospitals and there is self-funding – that is the mechanism by which the patient, or customer, can put up the cost of an operation and essentially
jump the queue. Very soon, within a few years, the NHS in England will consist of a two-tier service. We have to ask ourselves, do we want that in Scotland? “There are two very good reasons why
it is liable to come about in Scotland and it will come about if we vote No. “The first is economic. The Barnett
formula has been attacked by politicians of all parties and is very likely to be ditched. Whether or not the Barnett formula is ditched, Mr Osborne has promised us
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