SCOTLAND’S appalling health record and high rates of premature death cannot be blamed on poverty, according to the country’s most senior public health expert.

Instead, Professor Phil Hanlon, a leading government adviser, believes a sense of fatalism makes Scots drink and smoke heavily and eat dangerously unhealthy food.

He also suggested Scots’ notoriously dour, pessimistic demeanour — characterised by television characters such as Victor Meldrew and Rev I M Jolly — is to blame.

A study by Hanlon, professor of public health at Glasgow University, found that while the difference in poverty levels between Scotland and England has been reduced over the past 20 years, the difference in premature death rates has risen.

The findings undermine the belief that poverty is almost entirely to blame for higher rates of ill health and mortality — a central plank of new Labour philosophy.

Hanlon used census data and National Health Service statistics covering the past 20 years to compare death rates and deprivation levels in Scotland with those in England and Wales.

While 26% of the Scottish population was in the bottom social class in 1981, the proportion had fallen to 14% in 2001. Over the same period, mortality rates in Scotland rose from 12% higher than England’s to 15% higher.

Taking deprivation, age and sex into account, the death- rate gap between Scotland and England widened from 4.7% to 8.2%.

When Hanlon examined death rates in areas of comparable deprivation north and south of the border he discovered that those in Scotland were, on average, 17% higher.

“While in 1981 over 60% of the excess mortality could be explained by differences in deprivation profile, less than half could be explained in 1991 and this changed little at the 2001 census,” states his study, which will be published in the Journal of Public Health later this year.

Hanlon adds that it is “simply implausible” that genetics could explain the widening mortality gap over the past 20 years.Instead, he suggests that a distinct “Scottish effect” is to blame.

Hanlon argues that Scots are more inclined to take risks with their health than their southern counterparts, smoking and drinking more, while taking less exercise.

He also suggests that cultural differences may be responsible for poorer health north of the border.

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