Cost of being a Scot: two years off your life

Life expectancy for Scottish women was nearly two years less than that for the UK as a whole, at 80.1 compared with 81.9.

Scotland also fared worst in the UK for the amount of time people could expect to live healthy lives, according to the report covering the period between 2007 and 2009.

Men in Scotland can expect to be healthy up to the age of 60.1, compared with an average figure of 63.2 years for the rest of the UK.

Scottish women had a healthy life expectancy of 63.5, whereas the UK-wide figure was 65.

There was also a lower figure for Scotland on what age people could expect to reach free from disability. The figure for men in Scotland was 59.5, whereas men in the UK as a whole could expect to live up to 63.4 without any disability problems.

Scottish women had an average disability-free life expectancy of 63.5, while for those in the UK as a whole it was 65.1.

The ONS figures sparked concerns from senior Scottish politicians that Scotland was lagging behind the rest of the UK on improving life expectancy.

Scottish Labour’s health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said: “We need to invest in Scotland’s poorer communities to ensure that we deal with the problem of lower life expectancy.

“There’s an obvious link between poverty, poor health and life expectancy, and the SNP government has failed to tackle this. As a consequence, we have some parts of the UK much poorer than others, which we can see in these worrying figures.”

Conservative MSP Alex Johnstone said: “The figures are driven by the decisions people make about the way they live and should come as no surprise.

“We need to make sure that people are properly informed about how to be healthy, but it is not the government’s responsibility to mother people.”

Independent MSP Margo MacDonald said: “Life expectancy is one of the best tests of health, and these figures suggest we need to look more deeply at how we deal with the problem.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Reversing the deep-seated social and health problems we have inherited in relation to life expectancy takes time.

“We are well aware that we still live in a Scotland where the poorest in society suffer from unacceptable inequalities in health. This problem cannot be solved overnight.

“We believe that the only way to deal with health inequalities effectively is to address the underlying causes – issues such as negative early years experiences, poverty, unemployment, and poor physical and social environments.

“Our long-term plans to tackle these inequalities have had a successful impact on people’s lives and this is set to continue.”