Devolution, Labour, Mebyon Kernow and prescription charges

The nature of public funding and the fairness of it, is the subject of one of Mudhook's latest blogs. He/she is a Labour blogger (see footnote). They question the fairness of the Barnett formula and in particular why people in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales don't pay for them, yet in England and here in Cornwall people do have to pay for them. Laying the blame at the system of 'unfair' funding across the UK. They lay open this challenge:

Will Cornish nationalism, fretting about 1337 and all that, question this uneven imposition on sick people in Cornwall? Prescription charges are the real world …

I don't really know whether Mudhook thinks paying for prescriptions is or isn't fair, it's not a 100% clear. Who exactly is fretting about 1337 is also unclear (1337 is the date of the creation of the Duchy of Cornwall). It does however seem implied that prescription charges are somehow linked to the devolved administrations, as if having devolution and the funding that provides is linked to free prescriptions. Who knows today, had Cornwall been given an assembly by Labour, would we now pay for prescriptions?

I don't think really prescription charges has anything to do with the nature of public funding in the UK. Labour could have certainly afforded to pay for them to be free, billions were spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and big building schemes like the Millennium Dome and executive pay in the public sector rise and rise. I don't think the reason to abolish prescription fees is about money. The devolved administrations choose to find money from their budgets to abolish them. Even with the spending cuts they continue to do so. The real question is why didn't Labour choose to abolish prescription fees? The same can be said of tuition fees, Westminster controls what money everyone gets, they could easily have chosen for more money to be invested in university education rather than introducing tuition fees but they didn't, they could have abolished prescription fees but they choose not to.

My argument is that devolution, not only provides a better chance of more public funding. But it also provides more common sense policies. That despite the variances in political parties across the devolved administrations they have all chosen to enact legislation that helps peoples day to day lives, like free prescriptions. Policies like this and free parking at hospitals, they come nearer to that original ideal of the NHS, of a free health service for all. I don't think people should pay prescription fees, I really wonder for the legacy of Bevan in the Labour party when they didn't abolish the fees nor reduce the rises of the Thatcher and Major years. I believe that if Cornwall got devolution we'd have the some of these same common sense policies that the devolved Celtic Nations enjoy. Westminster is out of touch whether it be Labour or Tory/ Lib Dem, they all prove distant and uncaring. The problem is not funding it's political attitudes of the political class in London.

Out of interest Bevan resigned as a Labour minister in disgust at the first introduction of prescription fees in 1951, a great man of principle.

I wrote Mudhook is a Labour blogger but actually this is unclear and although they have supported Labour in the past they now concede on the post elections and voting in Cornwall that 'Labour, not a popular contender party in Cornwall.' Which is either an admittance that they're not popular or that Mudhook is now disillusioned with them....