Labour front-bencher takes on Tories and shows why staff, patients and public so angry
Labour front-bencher Jon Trickett gave television viewers this morning a harrowing account of the consequences of constant Tory under-investment in and privatisation of our NHS.
Trickett told of a constituent whose husband had to wait five hours this week – while unconscious – to be seen by doctors, who then said they didn’t have capacity to treat him. The Labour man explained the massive cuts in beds, facilities and funding that have hobbled the NHS – and asked viewers ‘what kind of country is it?’ in which the Tories are able to treat the ‘best of Britain’ in this way:
As leading GP Kailash Chand wrote earlier this week, the only thing keeping the NHS from complete collapse under the Tories is a herculean effort by its hard-pressed, underpaid staff.
Staff who, along with patients, were so angry yesterday when Johnson staged a ‘PR stunt’ at their hospital, that they booed him out of the building – a reality completely ignored by the BBC, Sky and ITV in their reporting.
For those who value our NHS and believe free healthcare is a human right, there can only be one choice at the ballot box in December – because there is only one party in the running for government who can and will protect it.
Vote Labour – and if you’re not registered to vote, join the hundreds of thousands doing so and do it now here. The deadline for this general election is 26 November, but don’t leave it to the last minute – and if you can’t vote in person, apply for a postal vote here.
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Too right! As a lad from Pontefract who attended Pontefract General Infirmary, Clayton & Pinderfields hospitals over many years the Tories are gutting the NHS. Labour’s mistake was the PFI-ing of health because of Gordon Brown’s taking the money of the government books. PGI did all sorts of operations, it’s A&E dept saved many a life due to it having easy access to the M62 & A1. Pontefract Hospital is a quarter of the size it once was and although it has an A&E dept it’s a shadow of its former self. Pinderfields is a not easy to get to and has probably swallowed up most of the available funding.
When Jeremy wins this election we need to cancel all the PFI contracts and build up the services people once had. Pontefract once had a specialist dementia/mental health provision with beds along with a proper maternity wing, both gone since they built the new PFI hospital with only 80 beds.
Let’s bring services back to the where they are needed!
The problem is, I’m afraid, that the decisions re. Pontefract, Clayton and Pinderfields were made under the Blair/Brown governments – as were the PFI arrangements.
That, of course, doesn’t alter the effects of later cuts – but the arguments over the reconfiguration of services and numbers of beds come from that previous era, when there was a desperate need for a long-awaited and deferred renewal of the hospitals.
Unfortunately renewal to Blair/Brown was money in the hands of service companies that took the money off the government’s balance sheet. There was no integration of services nor a get out of jail card for the NHS Trusts that found their costs going through the roof. They then made the mistake of not funding social care properly that was supposed to be reason for the smaller bed count, as everything was going to be done in the community. Along came Lansley’s so called reforms that made the silos even more disfunctional within the NHS. Blair/Brown have a lot to answer for on PFI, especially within the NHS. Labour must never let this happen again!
RH….And the privatization of the NHS and PFI came well before the Blair years under the Torys who’s hatred of the NHS was opposed right from day 1after the formation of the first National health service under a Labour government.after the war.years.
Christopher – Agreed. My point was merely factual re. your specific example. The debates over the loss of beds and reconfiguration of services at that time were massively controversial, from local government to Branch levels, and took place in the first years of the Blair governments.
Joseph. Of course the assaults on public services began during the previous Tory regimes. My point was simply to point out the culpability of policy during the Blair years in continuing that strategy. It was also the era of the abolition of the Community Health Councils – which, in the case Christopher cites, was quite active in close questioning of what was being put forward.
I take your point but its best to remember that what seems like yesterday to us is a long time ago especially if they are not over political and are looking back a decade ago were we may be able to look back to Macmillan and Harold Wilson,….time flys and I have shook the hands of Wilson and Blair and Jeremy Corbyn..but he was a regular visitor to our constituency and was not leader of the Labour party.I hope one day to shake the hand of Corbyn the first socialist PM
Again – agreed Joseph (although I always managed to be otherwise engaged for the ‘meet Tony’ events 🙂 ). More seriously – despite the twenty year gap, the continuing significance of those years in taking politics in the wrong direction when an alternative was possible cannot be underestimated.
Yet a Tory spokesman on Politics Live this lunchtime, said Tories were putting a record investment into the NHS.
The reality is over the 9 years of austerity the government have only invested c1% annually. The ‘ massive’ funding being quoted as now going into the NHS doesn’t make up the underfunding.
Same as ‘ extra’ 20,000 police, is less than what was reduced by May.
The Momentum woman on the panel, didn’t even question this lies about NH S investment.
Labour need to get their act together. All salient facts need to be at the fingertips of any Labour person who’s asked to appear on any news/ politics programme.
Basic homework of facts is a MUST.
Peter Berry…I wonder why momentum think they should speak for the Labour party,We are already in competition for funding and the profile of momentum is already a clear and present danger under the fiefdom of lansman.Remembering that the NHS has been gutted by the Torys is hardly rocket science for a Labour spokesperson.And neither is contacting the various news outlets daily to put forward someone to speak for the Labour party.,not some unnominated clown who has a different agenda than a Corbyn government
For several days the TV and the press have been reporting the case of a young woman, Bethany, (upper teens) who is an NHS patient in some kind of mental health unit (probably run by a private firm). She suffers from autism, and is kept in solitary confinement 24 hours a day without any physical contact and food is delivered via a hatch in the door. The room is described as a windowless room with no furniture and a mattress on the floor. When her father visits, he is not allowed in, but may hold her had through the hatch.
I am a retired mental health nurse. The care and treatment she is receiving is below that of the worst care provided in the mental hospital where I trained in the early 70’s and those I worked in later. This treatment is condoned by, if not approved by, the Chief Medical officer, the Chief Nurse at the DH, and the directors of medicine and nursing at the responsible trust, as well as MPs who are medical practitioners, for example Dr Dan Poulter MP, and Dr Sarah Wollaston MP Conservative and former conservative respectively.
Where are the regulatory bodies: the medical council, and the Nursing council, and the inspecting bodies eg Care Quality commission?
The treatment of mental health is drifting back to the 1960s,when lock in and electric shock treatment were everyday use for the “inmates” because that is what incarceration in a mental hospital was…prison.!.I thought we had moved beyond that..but obviously the Torys idea of treatment for patiants is lock em up!I am sure that if we allow the Torys back in we will be back to the Victorian nightmare in everyday life for the working classes….The people don’t realise what they’re in for under a Tory regime.
To what extent does ‘Snowflake’ culture exacerbate the serious problem of mental health?