The Tories have been caught lying about spending on the NHS. They claimed that they have increased spending on the NHS in each of the last two years.
But they were caught massaging the figures by the UK Statistics Authority.
Spending in 2009-2010 was £105.1 billion. But spending in 2011-2012 was lower, at £104.3 billion.
They’ve quietly altered their website.
But this is just the latest in a long list of attacks on the NHS. Labour opened the door to cuts and privatisation in England and the Con-Dems are marching through it.
Labour is cutting spending on the NHS in Wales even more than the Tories in England.
We have to fight every cut and every closure.
Defend every job and the wages and working conditions of every health worker.
Ending privatisation and bringing services back in-house would mean money could go to health services instead of profits for the healthcare vultures.
The Socialist Party calls for:
- No cuts in NHS spending. A well-funded service, free at the point of use, to provide for everyone’s health needs.
- End big business profiteering from the NHS! Abandon the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). No to private polyclinics, Independent Treatment Centres, Clinical Commissioning Groups and private hospitals.
- End ‘payment by results’. Take all health services and buildings back from big business and place them under public ownership. Publicly fund and integrate them with the rest of the NHS.
- Nationalise the pharmaceutical and medical supply industries, and all private health providers, with compensation paid only on the basis of proven need. Bring them under working class control and management.
- Abolish Foundation Trusts. For democratic control of local health services by elected health workers and community representatives as well as elected representatives from local and national government.
- Axe the Health and Social Care Act which is speeding up cuts and privatisation.
- End NHS job losses and low pay. For a 35-hour week without loss of pay.
- Give health workers an above-inflation pay increase. No pension cuts.
- For united national action to defend the NHS, with organised trade union action at its centre, supported by anti-cuts campaigns and service users. For a new mass workers’ party to fight for the NHS and against cuts and privatisation.
- For a socialist programme and a planned economy to end poverty, bad housing, unemployment, dangerous workplaces, pollution and inequality – the biggest killers and causes of ill health.
