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ONE of Scotland’s top breast surgeons has become a YouTube sensation with a grim warning that the NHS will die … without a Yes vote.

Dr Philippa Whitford, 55, has broken ranks to predict that without independence the NHS in Scotland will simply wither away.

She said: “In five years, England will not have an NHS and in 10 years, if we vote no, neither will we.

“If we do not vote Yes in September, I will be heartbroken. I have spent 32 years working in the NHS and it is very dear to me.”

A video of her lecture to a Women for Independence group has gone viral, attracting almost 30,000 hits, and she is now in demand to speak at Yes events across the country.

And it’s the Tory agenda of bringing private firms into the NHS which has convinced her independence is the way ahead.

By 2020, it is estimated 50 per cent of the English NHS will be run privately unless there is a policy u-turn or the Tories are unseated.

If we stay in the Union, Dr Whitford believes privatisation through the back door will inevitably come north too.

Control of health is devolved to the Scottish Parliament.

But since Scotland gets a share of the Westminster public spending budget, she argues that when that shrinks, there will be no alternative but to bring in the private sector.

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She said: “The Government can punitively cut any Scottish budget to make any Scottish Government enforce policy. They did that with public service pensions and they will do it again with the NHS and education.”

Born in Belfast but in Scotland since the age of 10, Dr Whitford believes her roots mean she’s not weighed down by a “Braveheart view” of the debate.

A consultant at Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock, she is married to German GP Hans and they have a 21-year-old son Sean, who describes himself as “half Irish, half German, 100 per cent Scots”.

She said: ”We do not have the Braveheart baggage that people throw at nationalists. We see it very much as about the future.

“We don’t have to have a DNA test to enter the debate, we just need to want to live here and want to build a new Scotland.”

Her new-found fame as a political commentator and poster woman for the Yes camp has come as a shock but Dr Whitford, who keeps fit by swimming in the sea near her Ayrshire home, has no plans to become a politician.

She said: “I am too straight- talking and I am not one to follow the rules. I would never be any good at playing the game.”

But Dr Whitford would like to contribute to the future direction of health care in an independent Scotland.

From a working class background, she was the first of her family to go to university.

She chose to go to Glasgow and study medicine as she was inspired by doctors who saved her mother when she suffered complications giving birth.

Dr Whitford said: “I found it amazing that there were people who could save her. I wanted to do something that would make a difference.”

Unlike many NHS consultants, she refuses to work in the private sector. She said: “It would have paid my mortgage off but I could never do it.”

When she turned 30, she travelled to Gaza where health services had been devastated by the Israeli occupation.

Dr Whitford also worked in Lebanon after the 16-year civil war and returned in 1993 to an NHS ravaged by Thatcherism.

The surgeon said: “I couldn’t believe it. Having seen people in Gaza die for the lack of access to health care and then to realise that we were setting about the NHS and trying to destroy it – that really shocked me.

“The NHS makes us one of the most fortunate countries in the world.”

In April, influential think-tank the King’s Fund recommended the Government charge patients up to £25 for a GP appointment.

The prospect makes Dr Whitford’s blood run cold.

She said: “Since the 80s we have been told everything has to be driven by the market and for poor people in England that has made life worse and worse. Nothing is sacred. I don’t think that’s what people in Scotland want.

“If we can get our independence and show we can have a sustainable way of life while actually looking after each other, then it sets the example that the market is not the only way.”

She maintains Scotland’s biggest gain from devolution was going back to a single NHS Scotland, integrated and co-operative, not forced by financial pressure to be internally competitive.

And she dismisses as “scaremongering” claims that Scottish patients would no longer be able to travel south for treatment.

But it is not just the health service Dr Whitford is desperate to protect.

As a medical lecturer, as well as a surgeon, she fears education becoming the exclusive domain of a wealthy elite. She said: “If I

was faced with the level of debt youngsters face now, I would not be a breast surgeon.

“Losing grants has brought about a big change. There are far fewer working class children becoming medical students.”

She also wants rights, such as the equality of women, to be enshrined in a constitution.

Throughout her career, Dr Whitford faced sexism. Despite her talents, she was advised to relinquish her dream of becoming a surgeon as in 1980, there were no female surgeons in Scotland.

Dealing with breast cancer patients, she says she sees first-hand women who are ill and struggling to survive in low income jobs with no sick pay or security. She is calling for a living wage to cut the number of working poor forced to live on benefits.

Dr Whitford said: “I have no problem with people who vote No because they believe in the Union.

“But I am upset by people who would love to see Scotland independent but are put off by huge headlines saying the lights will go out and we will all fall into the sea if they vote Yes.

“We are not voting for policy in September. We are voting for the right to take control. Whoever we elect in 2016, we elect on their manifesto and if they don’t deliver, we can chuck them out in 2020.

“We have never been able to do that before. If we vote Yes, then roll up our sleeves and do the work, I believe we can have the Scotland we want.”