Health worker and Socialist Party member
NHS bosses are planning swingeing cuts across the NHS with vital jobs and services, including mental health and addiction support, facing the axe. They described the cuts in terms like ‘eye-watering’ and ‘previously unthinkable’. The population must be thinking: ‘Did we elect a Labour government last year?’
NHS Trusts report looking to ‘shed’ 5% of their workforce. A workforce that is already significantly depleted, with staff often covering two or three roles as more and more NHS staff leave.
Many NHS workers will have believed that their working conditions would improve under a Labour government. What they have experienced instead is increased privatisation, lack of equipment, and no real improvement to their pay or conditions. The same Labour Party which, in opposition, crowed at the Tories to fully fund the NHS has responded to NHS bosses: “The extra funding provided should be enough”. Should? Have they checked? The answer is it won’t be enough!
The decade of Tory cuts, now continued by Starmer’s Labour, begs the question: what will the NHS be able to provide? When will the vultures decide enough is enough? Only when the private profiteers have full control of the NHS and the profits to be made.
This wilful destruction of our NHS, created to ensure free access to treatment at the point of need, will lead to deaths. Already an NHS leader has had to report at an inquest: “We were short staffed”.
Many NHS staff are teetering on the edge of the national minimum wage. Over the last few years, NHS pay has dropped so much that, this year, emergency pay increases have had to be applied to prevent Trusts illegally paying workers less than the minimum wage.
It certainly doesn’t feel to us like the NHS is ‘bloated’. Only a fully democratic review by workers, patients and community groups will provide an answer to what the NHS delivers and ensures it is funded to be able to do that. Relying on the bosses – who just look at cost and their profits – will only mean cuts for us and cake for the rich. A Labour government demanding cuts to services and staff when there are still massive waiting lists seems inconceivable; but of course it is conceivable when the Labour Party is wedded to the capitalist class and dances to its tune. Kick out the privateers and nationalise the pharmaceutical companies – who made £12 billion of ‘excess’ profits from their NHS contracts in 2023.
What the NHS can achieve is under no doubt after the incredible response of its workers to the Covid pandemic. Just imagine what healthcare we could all expect under a socialist system with workers and users planning and implementing what is needed for all.
A clash is coming, NHS workers care about our service and our patients, and have shown that we will fight using strike action for patient safety and their livelihoods. We will fight for a socialist NHS, free at the point of use, fully funded and under democratic control, using the vast wealth that exists in society but is currently in the pockets of the super-rich.
