“Wes Streeting says that if the NHS doesn’t change, it will die. But it is inadequate funding that has left our NHS in a poor state of health, not lack of reform.
“Between 2010 and 2019 the UK had a lower level of capital investment in health care and 18% lower average health spending than 14 EU countries.
“So to say that the public is paying a heavy price for failure is an insult to hard-working NHS staff, who are doing their level best despite being overworked and underpaid. It is the failure to invest adequately and pay staff properly that is at the root of dissatisfaction with the NHS.
“The public agrees. They don’t want endless reforms; neither do they share the Conservative or Labour appetite for creeping privatisation. They want the current model to work and to see the NHS available to everyone free of charge and primarily funded through taxes. A tax on the super-rich billionaires and multi-millionaires can provide the funds needed to fix our cherished NHS.
“The Green Party has never had any truck with the profit motive in health care and will continue to push for a fully publicly funded NHS.”
BRITAIN is worried about the NHS. The latest Social Attitudes Survey shows less than a quarter of the population are satisfied with the health service. That represents a drop of 29 per cent in just three years — the fastest fall ever.
That’s hardly surprising. Waiting lists at over seven million represent months of pain for people waiting on procedures. Seeing a GP in a hurry is all but impossible in many areas. Waiting times in A&E are breaching targets wherever you look.
This suits private healthcare interests down to the ground.
The number of privatised medical procedures hit a record last year. People who can afford it are going private: people who can’t afford it, the vast majority, are suffering.
The degradation of the NHS, and the consequent pressure for “reform” in the form of ever-greater dependence on for-profit provision, follows a familiar playbook. US academic Noam Chomsky summed it up: “That’s the standard technique of privatisation: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.”
People are angry about the state of the NHS, but there is certainly no public enthusiasm, or even consent, to increasing the role of private capital.
The NHS’s founder Nye Bevan famously said the NHS would last as long as people had the faith to fight for it.
Victim of repeated smears and even a discredited prosecution is planning a bid at the next Ilford North parliamentary election, say locals
Syed Siddiqi, the former Labour member repeatedly abused, harassed and smeared by right-wing Labour figures in Ilford in north London, is planning to stand against right-winger Wes Streeting in the next Ilford North parliamentary election, according to local sources.
In 2018, Streeting also launched a ‘disgraceful’ and ‘disgusting’ tirade in the face of Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black woman MP, leaving Abbott ‘shell-shocked’. If he stands, Syed Siddiqi can expect considerable support from outraged former Labour supporters around the country who would be delighted to see Streeting ejected.
If it wins the next general election in the UK, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party could try to fix the damage inflicted on the National Health Service by years of Tory austerity. But Labour seems set on further privatizing the NHS.
Everywhere you look in the health service, the signs of thirteen years of austerity and willful Tory neglect are apparent. The Tories have, throughout their time in government, allowed the National Health Service (NHS) to go to rack and ruin, sending staff morale crashing through the floor and putting patients’ lives at risk.
The waiting list for surgery or specialist clinical care — partly a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic but exacerbated by years of chronic underfunding — stands at a record high of 7.22 million. Millions of patients, meanwhile, are struggling to get general practitioner (GP) appointments due to the immense pressures on NHS primary care.
Ambulance waiting times are alarmingly long: in December, response times in England were the worst on record, while the number of patients waiting twelve hours or more to be admitted to accidents and emergency department (A&E) also hit a new all-time high. NHS dentistry, in addition, is in a state of almost-total collapse.
Both opinion polls and the recent local elections in England indicate that the Tories are on track to lose the next general election. While the differences between Keir Starmer’s Labour and Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives are narrowing all the time, it might at least be expected that the Labour Party would repair the worst of the damage done since 2010. The NHS remains the great survivor of postwar social democracy. But statements from the Labour front bench suggest otherwise.
Right-wingers hammered in Socialist Health Association elections said to be aiming to disaffiliate SHA on pretext after organisation condemned Starmer and sidekick Streeting for appalling health policy
The Labour right is angling to kick the Socialist Health Association (SHA) out of the party after the faction was crushed in the SHA’s internal elections – and in revenge for the SHA’s resounding condemnation of Labour’s privatisation-friendly health policy.
The right-wing slate had tried to boycott the elections claiming, presumably after seeing how poor their chances were, that the election was set up against them – but left it too late and the vote went ahead, with the right losing by a ratio of roughly six to one. As one wag put it, it must have been quite some fix to achieve that kind of ratio.
The previous SHA exec last month issued a scathing condemnation of Keir Starmer and his health spokesman Wes Streeting’s plan to extend the use of private healthcare in the NHS, the contempt the pair have shown for the health policy unanimously voted for by Labour members at last year’s party conference and the pair’s readiness to accept large donations from donors with private health interests – a position now resoundingly re-endorsed by SHA members:
At the 2022 Labour Party Conference, the Health Composite Motion moved by the Socialist Health Association (“SHA”) stated that Labour would adopt “a position of outright opposition to and commit to vote against any and all forms of privatisation of the NHS” and “commit to returning all privatised portions of the NHS to public control upon forming a Government”. It also banned Labour MPs from accepting donations from private companies interested in outsourcing NHS functions. See Conference Arrangements Committee Report 4, page 12.
The SHA’s motion was endorsed by a compositing process involving rank and file members, local constituency parties, trade unions, and the shadow frontbench. The Labour Conference passed it unanimously.
That is not the position democratically agreed at Labour Conference. And it is simply wrong, for the following reasons.
It is simply wrong to say that the private sector has greater capacity to clear NHS backlogs. The people working in the private healthcare sector are, by and large, the same doctors and nurses who work in the NHS, and with the exception of the overseas health workers, the vast majority of them were trained in the NHS. Every hour of staff time devoted to private healthcare is an hour of staff time taken away from public healthcare for those who need it most.
It is simply wrong to say that the private sector is more “efficient”. One example of this is that the Institute for Public Policy Research has found that Tony Blair’s Private Finance Initiatives cost the NHS almost £80 billion for only £13 billion of investment. The only party which benefits ‘efficiently’ from private finance is big finance – not patients.
It is shameful that the Shadow Cabinet has failed to stand shoulder to shoulder with health unions in demanding fair pay and conditions for their members. The BMA has calculated that junior doctors have suffered a real pay cut of 26.1% since 2008 – meaning an exodus of qualified doctors driven out of the public sector just when patients need them most. Staff working conditions are patient treatment conditions.
The impetus for Labour’s ban on accepting donations from private companies interested in outsourcing NHS functions was a report that, in 2022, Wes Streeting accepted a £15,000 donation from hedge fund manager John Armitage. Mr Armitage’s fund owns shares worth more than half a billion dollars in UnitedHealth. UnitedHealth is America’s largest health insurer. It has spent millions of dollars lobbying US politicians against healthcare reform through seven different lobbying forms. This includes lobbying against the Affordable Insulin Now Act, which would guarantee supplies to insulin to diabetics who depend on it to survive. It is one of the largest profiteers from NHS outsourcing and one of the biggest potential beneficiaries of future privatisation.
It is therefore also beyond disappointing to see that Wes Streeting has accepted a further £60,000 from MPM Connect. Wes Streeting and the other recipients funds from MPM Connect (including Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Mayor Dan Jarvis) should urgently confirm just what MPM Connect does; the terms under which they accepted a total of £340,000 from MPM Connect; just what MPM Connect expects in return; and whether its “investments in the employment sector” include further NHS outsourcing.
Accepting donations from private companies interested in NHS outsourcing creates an apparent conflict of interest, and undermines public confidence in Labour’s commitment to rebuilding a publicly owned and provided NHS.
We call on Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting to commit to the policy democratically agreed by the Labour Party – preventing further privatisation and immediately returning all privatised parts of the NHS to public ownership and control.
Mark Ladbrooke SHA Chair
Harry Stratton SHA Secretary
Esther Giles SHA Treasurer
In apparent revenge, Skwawkbox understands that the Labour right – which now dominates the party’s national executive, is planning to table a move to expel or disaffiliate the SHA from the party, on the pretext that the result was somehow rigged despite the massive majority for the left slate, along with the membership status of one or more of the SHA’s elected officers.
But it seems the right is so desperate to eradicate any left strongholds in the party – and to cover up the betrayal of the NHS by what passes for Labour’s ‘leadership’ – that it will resort to even the most grotesque and shameless lengths to achieve it.
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