22 September 2010
Public bodies in Scotland could deal with many of the country’s social problems more effectively by spending on ‘preventative’ measures, the Scottish Parliament finance committee was told yesterday.
The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts – which promotes innovation to solve major economic and social problems – said that preventative programmes could have an enormous impact on service provision and cost-effectiveness.
The organisation told MSPs that health spending per head was 12%–16% higher in Scotland than in England, yet Scotland did not have better health outcomes and its overall mortality rate was 15% higher than in England.
Dr Michael Harris, director of public and social innovation at Nesta, said it was recognised that current models of provision did not always have the desired impact and more preventative spending was needed. He added: ‘Preventative spending could ensure public services are able to meet future demand by realigning service delivery away from reacting to problems to preventing and solving them. This is a dramatic departure from traditional service delivery.’
Harris was one of four witnesses giving evidence to the committee. The others were Sir John Arbuthnott, of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; Alan Sinclair, of the Centre for Confidence; and Professor Edward Melhuish, of the University of London.
Arbuthnott said that the latest available figures showed that only 4% of total health expenditure in England was on preventative spending and the figure for Scotland was likely to be broadly similar.
Using preventative spending to avoid negative social outcomes had to be an integral part of the rethinking of the public sector he said.
Melhuish stressed the importance of high quality pre-school education as an effective use of preventative spending. He claimed there was some evidence that Scotland was lagging behind in the quality of this service.
He added that there was a great disparity between preventative spending in the UK and in Scandinavian countries.
