Brent Kennedy, Carlisle Socialist Party
Only the gullible will believe Rishi Sunak’s latest hyped-up “long-term plan” for more NHS staff. It is a never-never land wish list of figures which won’t add up without proper funding, like past broken Tory promises of “5,000 more doctors” or “40 new hospitals”.
The latest plan has been watered down by the Treasury by postponing its implementation until the 2030s. The Tories want our votes today for jam tomorrow. Even the new doctor training won’t start for another two years, when the Tories will be almost certainly in opposition.
Despite the myth of ‘throwing money’ at the NHS, for ten years the Tories have starved it of investment, spending £40 billion less each year than comparative European countries, amounting to 18% less per head.
As a result we have comparatively fewer doctors, nurses, beds, CT and MRI scanners, below-average survival rates for cancer and heart patients, and therefore a shorter life expectancy than the other 18 similar economies, according to a report by The King’s Fund.
NHS England is struggling with 154,000 unfilled vacancies, which on current trends would soar to 570,000 by 2036. This will not be solved with just £2.4 billion over five years.
They claim there will be 24,000 more trainee nursing places by 2031, but last year 40,000 nurses left the NHS. Doctors are leaving in droves. The Tories ‘hope’ to retain 130,000 staff who would otherwise leave, but how on earth will they – or Labour – achieve that without restoring their real living standards with an adequate pay rise? Both refuse.
None of this helps the 7.4 million patients desperately waiting for operations or treatment, 80% of whom support the principle of the NHS and oppose privatisation. Rather than suffer the pain or die, some are blowing their savings on private operations.
The Socialist Party is fighting to save our NHS through the nationalisation of private health, social care, dentistry and pharmaceuticals; scrapping the PFI rip-off; a massive investment in hospitals, training, wages, scrapping student fees and reinstating bursaries; and bringing OUR NHS under the democratic control of the staff and users.
