‘WE feel a very strong connection to our local hospitals and that has been evidenced over and over when the services those hospitals provide have been under threat. But it is not the buildings that are important to us, it is the NHS itself, the institution and the philosophy of cradle to grave care, free at the point of need.

That is one of the reasons why I was so pleased when the SNP Government removed prescription charges and why I am delighted that the First Minister has announced the intention to enshrine Bevan’s founding principles of the NHS in Scotland’s written constitution after a ‘Yes’ vote.

The NHS is, rightly, becoming one of the central issues as we enter the last stage of the Referendum debate and, as an example of how the NHS in Scotland has been developing differently from elsewhere in the UK, I remember vividly, at a recent ‘Yes’ public meeting, a member of the audience – a former nurse - speaking from the heart about what is happening to the NHS down south and how a friend of her’s in Birmingham, who had undergone a first treatment which did not work, is now having to pay for a second treatment.

That would not happen in Scotland. Yet. As the means of financing the NHS in England changes and other pressures on the public purse build, the ability of the Scottish Government – of any political make up – to maintain that divergent path will be severely compromised. Because the bottom line is that the Westminster Treasury decides the size of our cake, the Scottish Government can only choose how to slice it.

Earlier this year, Welsh Labour Health Minister, Mark Drakeford, was clear that Westminster budget cuts would impact on the health service in Wales, stating, “We have a Westminster Government that believes in shrinking the state, which believes in doing less through the public realm, and passes less money down to us in order to be able to do it.” The same situation would apply in Scotland. That is how funding works in the devolved settlement. Westminster controls the purse strings.

As Dr Philippa Whitford, a consultant breast surgeon, has made very clear in a powerful speech which has gone ‘viral’ on social media, because of the changes taking place in England, “Independence is our only chance to protect NHS Scotland from privatisation”.

Between 7am and 10pm on the 18th September we - each of us – will hold a power in our hands that we have never held before as we stand in the polling booth with the pencil poised over the ballot paper. We will genuinely have the opportunity to create a better country for future generations and the knowledge that each and every vote counts. We should grasp that opportunity’.