At 10.30am this morning, Jeremy Corbyn will give a speech to the Royal College of Nurses Conference in Liverpool on NHS funding – or, more precisely, on investing in #OurNHS.
Some key points:
- it’s only when we come together as a society to look after each other that no-one gets left without care.
- investing in the NHS is sound financial sense – there is a £4 return for every £1 invested in public healthcare. (source: World Health Organisation)
- just administering a ‘market’ in the NHS costs at least £4.5bn a year more than not running one (source: CHPI [small ‘c’] conservative estimate). Labour will scrap this *real* waste.
- we – the ‘ordinary’ people – can’t afford not to have an NHS – a fully public NHS.
- cutting healthcare spending does not “save money for the taxpayer” – it denies healthcare to the patient.
- cutting our public healthcare benefits only one group – private healthcare providers. This is why private companies advise the government to make cuts to healthcare.
Here are a few excerpts from Corbyn’s speech:
This is about having a health service for the many.
In the past seven years the Tories have driven our National Health Service into crisis.
A&E departments are struggling to cope. Waiting lists are soaring and, and as we saw last week, Tory cuts have exposed patient services to cyberattack.
Imagine what would happen to the NHS if the Conservatives under Theresa May were to have another five years in power. It would be unrecognisable: a national health service in name, cut back, broken up and plundered by private corporations.
Only Labour will put the NHS back on its feet.
Today we are pledging an extra £37 billion over the course of the next Parliament, including £10 billion of capital funding to make sure that NHS buildings and IT systems are fit for the modern day.
That investment will mean the NHS will be able to guarantee treatment within 18 weeks and ensure those needing A&E services are seen within four hours.
You can’t trust the Tories with our NHS. Labour founded the NHS and we will restore it to good health.
The Tories’ mealy-mouthed non-pledges will be abandoned the instant they’ve served their purpose – and they haven’t even bothered to make any on the NHS, as Jeremy Hunt has – again – gone AWOL.
Bhy contrast, Labour under Corbyn stands unequivocally on the side of patients, nurses, doctors, other health staff and every person in this country who will or might one day need treatment from our NHS.
Free at the point of need – for all of us.
The reception he’ll receive from nurses this mornig will show that you can trust Labour with our NHS. You can never trust a Tory.
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