NHS

Morning Star: We need an emergency Budget – but there’s no relief in sight

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Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt leaves 11 Downing Street, London, with his ministerial box before delivering his Budget in the Houses of Parliament, March 6, 2024

BRITAIN needed an emergency Budget today, one that addressed the profound crises facing local authorities, healthcare, education, you name it.

It got nothing of the sort. A scattering of headline investments like the “NHS productivity plan,” focused on IT systems and ignoring the staff shortages that have led to waiting lists seven million long.

A 2p cut to National Insurance that benefits higher earners more and, by reducing the tax take, tightens the funding squeeze on essential services. Bigger cuts to capital gains tax, incentivising the property speculation that has helped drive the housing crisis.

It was a complacent Budget, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt spending longer trying to explain away Britain’s “technical” recession as some kind of economic success (the same Chancellor said last year he was “comfortable” with Bank of England policy causing a recession to reduce wages) than he did outlining new measures that might make a difference.

Britain has “turned the corner” on inflation, he claims, though prices rising more slowly doesn’t mean prices falling and millions of us know what we pay for food, energy and a roof over our heads has soared in recent years.

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There is plenty of money. Last month Britain’s Big Four banks announced their highest annual profits ever.

We see record-breaking profits in the energy cartels, big agribusiness, soaring profit margins in the FTSE 350 table of big companies. These aren’t “difficult economic circumstances.” It is class war.

And if Labour won’t strike a blow for workers in that war, unions will need to find another way to change our country’s direction.

Continue ReadingMorning Star: We need an emergency Budget – but there’s no relief in sight

Greens say that people can see through pre-election Budget tax bribes

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Image of the Green Party's Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.

“People can see through these pre-election tax bribes that will have to be paid for by cuts to our NHS and other vital public services,” says Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer. 

Denyer said: 

“People are crying out for investment in social care, in our NHS and in dentistry. We needed a ‘care full’ Budget but have ended up with a careless, reckless Budget. 

“Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is attempting to bribe the electorate through tax cuts, which can only mean more pain for public services that are already on their knees.   

“People won’t be richer, healthier or happier because of this Budget. People know a con when they see one.  

“The Fairness Foundation found only 16 per cent of the British public and 17 per cent of Conservative voters would support tax cuts if it meant public service cuts.

“Councils are going bust up and down the country, NHS waits are getting longer, dentists can’t be found, while anyone travelling by train or bus, or visiting our town centres feels the lack of investment all around them. 

“These headline tax cuts will do nothing to reverse the decade-long, real-terms wage freeze most workers have faced under successive Conservative governments. 

“The Resolution Foundation says those earning up to £19k pa will be losers because of freezing of tax thresholds, while pensioners and those on benefits gain nothing at all.

“There is wealth in the UK, but it is distributed unfairly. Our economy is failing because our wealth, rather than circulating and benefiting everybody, is held in the stagnant assets of the super-rich.  

“So, we needed a Budget that released the money available from a wealth tax to invest in the green jobs of the future, to cut NHS queues and restore nature and the places we live and work. 

“We needed a Budget that introduced a Wealth Tax, and reformed Capital Gains Tax and National Insurance to raise over £50bn per year.

“That would have provided the vital public investment our country is crying out for. 

“Now we have Labour huffing and puffing but offering no real alternative to being locked into a Conservative-forged cuts straitjacket. 

“Thankfully, a General Election is coming where people can vote Green for the real change that will lead to a fairer, healthier and more caring country.” 

Continue ReadingGreens say that people can see through pre-election Budget tax bribes

Natalie Bennett: The state of our NHS is down to long-term political failure

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/02/natalie-bennett-the-state-of-our-nhs-is-down-to-long-term-political-failure/

The Green Party holds that the profit motive should have no place in our health care – in any form of care

Natalie Bennett is a Green Party member of the House of Lords. She was leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2012-16.

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Perhaps because it is a continuing story of disaster, there’s few stories now also about the impact of privatisation, despite the level continuing to rise. In 2022 nearly 10 per cent of treatments for NHS patients, more than 2 million people, were provided by private companies, up from 3 per cent in 2011. Yet there’s evidence that in areas where privatisation is at the highest levels the outcomes are dire – in the form of more people dying from treatable causes.

In mental health care – in the face of terribly tragedies, and much higher levels of privatisation, with public provision gutted – there’s been more attention. Now 55 per cent of under-18 inpatient mental health care is delivered by for-profit providers.

Meanwhile, we are all continuing to pay for the disaster of Labour Party-promoted Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes. That sees some hospitals paying a sixth of their total budget on payments, frequently to offshore hedge funds, and from a £13 billion original investment a final bill that will reach £80 billion, the equivalent of £1,200 for each person in the UK.

The Green Party holds that the profit motive should have no place in our health care – in any form of care – but the current largest opposition party, Labour, appears to be a fan of even further steps of privatisation.

There’s also long term underfunding, with austerity in the face of a growing and ageing population having disastrous impacts. Provision for investment on infrastructure and technology collapsed; the RAAC crisis was just one visible tip of a very large iceberg of decline.

And that austerity saw a collapse in real terms of the pay of nurses and doctors, which has seen a huge exodus overseas and to other jobs, meaning huge understaffing, which puts massive pressure on remaining staff.

Make no mistake. The state of the system is not the fault of medical staff. It is not the fault of managers. It is a long-term political failure, the application of ideology over evidence, the interests of private companies over public good.

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/02/natalie-bennett-the-state-of-our-nhs-is-down-to-long-term-political-failure/

Continue ReadingNatalie Bennett: The state of our NHS is down to long-term political failure

Government delays plans to double number of medical students in England

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/25/government-u-turn-on-plans-to-double-number-of-medical-students-in-england

Junior doctors walk through a hospital corridor. Photograph: sturti/Getty Images

Fears for impact on NHS workforce as leaked letter reveals ministers stall on aim to increase trainee doctors to 15,000 by 2031

Ministers have dramatically stalled plans to double the number of doctors being trained in England by 2031 in a move that has caused dismay across the NHS, as well in medical schools and universities, the Observer can reveal.

In June last year, ministers backed a long-term plan to expand the NHS workforce and pledged, amid great fanfare, to “double medical school places by 2031 from 7,500 today to 15,000, with more medical school places in areas with the greatest shortages to level up training and help address geographic inequity”. Labour is also committed to raising the number of doctors to 15,000 by 2031.

But a leaked letter written jointly by health minister Andrew Stephenson and the minister for skills, apprenticeships and higher education, Robert Halfon, to the independent regulator the Office for Students, says they will fund only 350 additional places for trainee doctors in 2025-26. This is less than a quarter of the annual number widely anticipated and there is no guarantee that even that level of resource will be repeated.

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/25/government-u-turn-on-plans-to-double-number-of-medical-students-in-england

Continue ReadingGovernment delays plans to double number of medical students in England