24/06/2013 Newsnight Scotland

guarantee contentment. An Newsnight Scotland tonight: If you live in

Glasgow, you are 30% more likely to die prematurely. But still no easy

explanation as to why Glasgow's excess mortality exceeds can parable

places like Liverpool. Also tonight, a look back at the

career of Lord Fraser, the Tory politician who had few enemies, even

in Scotland. The so-called Glasgow affect is back

in the news. In short, you will die earlier if you are Glaswegian and

nobody knows why. Research is at the Centre for population health are

trying to filter out, -- filter out identifiable differences between it

Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. But the research seems to find more

mysteries than answers. There is no doubt Glasgow has

experienced the same history with most of the same problems on the

same benefits over the past 100 years as many other major European

industrial cities. Nor is there any doubt that your life expectancy as a

modern Sweden is worse than that of comparator citizens elsewhere. The

scientists and statisticians that study these things would add that

the Glasgow affect is a fairly recent phenomenon. This graph shows

life expectancy for Scotland was not bad at all compared with 20 other

European countries compared to 1950. I1980, Scotland was bottom, and

since then it has got worse, with younger men living in Glasgow

carrying the largest part of the statistical word in. But it is not

just younger men. In Glasgow, 13% more people die prematurely than

their equivalents in Liverpool or Manchester and if you look at those

who die under 65, the Glasgow figure is 30% worse than the comparison.

The causes of death are identified. Alcohol and drugs, violence and road

accidents and suicide. Heart disease and cancers contribute, but there be

still no explanation of why they happen more in Glasgow. The research

confirms that poverty is clearly associated with ill health but the

statisticians can level at that factor and they still find that you

die earlier in Glasgow. Your gender does not matter and the effect is

still evident whether you are from a deprived or non-deprived

neighbourhood. So what questions are they asking. Specifically in their

survey, the researchers tried to establish if Glasgow has less sense

of coherence or social capital and other cities, or do sectarianism or

recent political history play a part? Two people have a different

set of values or is it that earlier years experience is worse? So what

are the answer is? More of that in a moment. Once again it has proved

extremely difficult to pin down specific differences. The idea of a

sense of coherence, the extent to which people understand and control

their own lives and have a sense of meaning, had looked promising, but

the survey concludes that Glaswegians actually do better on

the school than their counterparts in the North of England, so that is

not an explanation of the Glasgow affect either.

I am joined now by David Walsh, lead author of the new report. Welcome to

the programme. Despite the extensive survey there is no data to back up

the theories, as we have been hearing, why Glasgow is different.

Are you confident the data you have gathered is correct? Yes. It is

important to clarify what was said in the report, that the big driver

of poor health in any society, Glasgow included, is poverty and

deprivation. There seems to be something else going on here.

Because of that it has allowed a number of theories to be put

forward. It has allowed a lot of people to put forward a lot of pet

theories even though there is no data to refute or support them. We

did a bit of work trying to assess what the most plausible theories

could be and then we had to try to collect some data for those

theories. So we have undertaken a sample of the three cities, a

reasonably representative sample where we are happy with those data.

But there are always questions about whether it is all sections of

society. You mentioned pet theories some people have. What are the

theories out there? Which ones do you subscribe to and also dismiss?

All sorts of theories have been proposed. This is part of the

difficulty that so many people have come forward with different

theories. We have tried to look at this in some sort of scientific and

logical fashion. In this study we collected data for seven different

theories. To be clear, the answer will not be one thing. It will be a

complex interaction of allsorts of different things that interact in a

way that would be difficult to tease out, but as a first step it is

important to say, is there any evidence at all for these particular

theories showing differences between the cities? Some mentioned in the

report are ones we collected data for, including things like people in

Glasgow possibly being less optimistic for the future, and that

would therefore impact on their health and behaviour. Glasgow,

Liverpool and Manchester are such socio-economically different grunt

cities that it would be surprising if that was the case. There was no

evidence of that, that levels of optimism were different in Glasgow

to Liverpool and Manchester. mentioned in the report the

philosophical concept of our money, Anderson is or alienation. --

anomie, Boundless nurse or alienation. These are not our

hypotheses, people have written them and we are putting them to the test

trying to find the data. In times of economic or social change it is

thought there is a breakdown or absence of social norms. It is a

tricky concept to get your head around but it was proposed related

to alienation, a section of the population being alienated. The

survey does not support the hypothesis, but whether a survey

like this could reach the sections of society you would need to reach

is open to question. At the end of the report, you have a discussion

topic looking at how you are going to take this in the future. What

further investigations might you have and which strands will you go

down? This survey has collected new data for some hypotheses. We have

other projects looking at other work. We have a whole programme of

research looking at this. Data have been collected and interrogated and

what is going to be important as more evidence and reports come

through is that we sit down and try to synthesise what all the results

are and what they actually mean and see how far are learning has

advanced. So we hope to do that later in the year and next year,

when the other projects have run their course. And it is a fairly

shocking statistic, and I'm sure many Glaswegians will be pretty

shocked to learn that and learned that it is true. Yes. I have stopped

using the term the Glasgow affect. It has been used and abused a little

bit and it insights a lot of people in terms of this mystery at the

bottom line is it is not an exciting thing, it is about white thousands

of people literally died before their time in Glasgow. It is

affecting individuals and families and community so it is vital we get

to the bottom of it. Thank you. There have been many tributes to

Lord Fraser, the former Conservative Lord Advocate. It was announced at

the weekend he had died suddenly. His involvement in key episodes of

Scottish life, the Holyrood Parliament and Lockerbie stand out.

Our reporter has been looking at his life. Peter Fraser was one of those

politicians who crossed the party divide. He entered the political

stage in 1979 as a conservative in the then Angus but lost his seat

eight years later. He became a life peer. His appointment as a Lord

Advocate propelled him to the international stage. As Scotland's

top prosecutor he was in charge of bringing the perpetrators of the

Lockerbie warming to justice. -- Lockerbie bombing.

One was acquitted at trial, the other was convicted in 2001 of

smuggling and explosive on board the flight.

Years later Lord Fraser IDE is with the decision to release him on

compassionate grounds. -- agreed with the decision.

The idea that the President of the United States and the head of the

FBI should be combine to be anti-Scottish at the moment seems to

me to be disastrous. More controversial still was the Wellcome

that the convicted bomber received upon his return to Libya. It was all

organised. The justice secretary has to take some responsibility for not

checking that up. Away from the legal scene Lord Fraser was a

leading figure in the fight against devolution.

He was a member of a group of conservatives arguing for a

self-governing Assembly, but in the devolution campaign he argued for a

no foot. -- vote. Despite Lord Fraser's best effort

devolution was enacted in 1999. But the early years of the Parliament

were symbolised by the construction of the new Holyrood building which

was beset by delays and cost overruns. Lord Fraser was appointed

to investigate the fiasco. I am determined that the enquiry

should be as cruel and translated as possible. -- as complete as

transparent as possible. He had a stylish way of asking questions. You

would never hear him raising his voice. He was such an engaging man

that he was almost irresistible. While the conclusions of the enquiry

into thousand and four did not do live a smoking gun, Lord Fraser

offered his findings into it. You'll. My report has been delivered

today within budget. He concluded there was no single villain of the

piece. Latterly Lord Fraser put his skills to use as an adviser. How

will he be remembered? Peter Fraser was described as quiet, clever and

nice. I joined by Alan Cochrane, who was a

friend of Lord Fraser. Lord Fraser was friendly with pretty much

everyone across the political divide. Yes. He had an infectious

giggle. It was readily used by Lord Fraser. He had friendships across

the political divide. There was a famous case on a flight. The case

went nowhere. On the flight with him were and Labour MP and under then NP

and to Mac beers. -- and to peers. Peter Fraser carried out his

duties. Everyone knew he was a Tory anti-me no secret of his political

affiliations, but he still managed to land some of the biggest jobs in

Scotland. Chewing the Hollywood enquiry people write me were looking

for blood. But Peter Field as He was key in the Lockerbie trial.

On devolution he went up, down, round the houses. On Lockerbie, he