Labour and Tory NHS privatisation
I enjoyed Jon Dale’s article graphically showing Labour’s continuity with Tory NHS privatisation (See ‘Labour will add to Tory NHS crisis with more privatisation’). At the same time, it prompted me to recall a shocking statistic from a BMA journal. The total number of NHS hospital beds in England has more than halved over the past 30 years from 299,000 in 1988 to 141,000 in 2020. A significant proportion of that bed loss was previously allocated to mental health patients and those with learning disabilities. Over the same period for general and acute care, the reduction was 44%. Again, a significant proportion of that bed loss was previously for long-term care of older people. Those people who are now called ‘bed blockers’.
Among Boris Johnson’s biggest lies during the pandemic was the claim that the NHS was not overwhelmed. However, the best explanation for the relentless rise of NHS privatisation and the NHS’s downfall is in Steve Score’s ‘Marxist Economics’ in the Socialist Party’s new book ‘Introduction to Marxism’: “Anything that goes on in society that makes a profit for the capitalist is seen by them as productive. So the work of a nurse in a public sector hospital… is viewed as ‘unproductive labour’, whereas the work of a nurse employed by a private health company is ‘productive labour’”.
With a general election potentially imminent, and the prospect of an incoming Labour government, Jon quotes Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary: “The state of the public finances means that Labour will not be able to open the government cheque book.” In 2010 following defeat in the general election, Liam Byrne, a senior Treasury minister, left a note for his Tory-Lib Dem replacement stating there was “no money left”. 13 years later, another New Labour politician and the same old story.
John Merrell
‘I owe the NHS my life – lets fight for it!’
Despite years of chronic underfunding, and by backdoor privatisation, overworked and criminally underpaid NHS staff still battle on daily to save lives.
We need the NHS. Speaking as someone with Type 1 diabetes, I owe my life to the NHS and its dedicated staff. No way do I have the financial means to afford the insulin I need simply to live.
Enough people have already died due to benefit sanctions, austerity, and Tory mismanagement of the pandemic. The Tories have blood on their hands, which no amount of scrubbing will remove.
I am not prepared to let this heartless profit-driven government sign my death warrant. I might not live to see global socialism, but I will keep on with the fight to make it happen! Who’s with me?
Melanie Dent
