Labour was in government during the period in which the Mid–Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust presided over the abuse and neglect of thousands of patients, leading to many deaths.
Last week I visited my GP surgery. After a much more protracted wait than any prior visit, I was given a homily about the state of the NHS, advised that it might be easier to seek a scan (already advised by another practitioner) through a private route.
“That is the most extraordinary speech I have heard from a secretary of state for Health in all my years in this House – this is the first speech in which a secretary of state has claimed he is not responsible for anything.”
The number of patients having to wait more than four hours in A&E has reached its highest level in nine years.
The chancellor went on the Today programme this morning to trumpet his success in getting seven government departments to agree on their budgets for 2015-16 as part of the Spending Review that he will announce on 26 June. It is reported that they have all agreed to cuts of between 8 and 10 per cent.
To Whom it May Concern,
Congratulations on your appointment as the next chief executive of NHS England. You take over an organisation in a volatile state, facing funding cuts, despite the government’s rhetoric.
In Place of Fear, the title of Aneurin Bevan’s book published on the 10th anniversary of the Beveridge Report, is synonymous with all that the welfare state stood for and what it sought to achieve. In 2013, as the principles of Bevan and Beveridge are being killed off, the belief that inequalities should narrow is also under attack.
People in Wales suffering accidents through sporting activity could be subject to an ‘activity tax’ under new Tory proposals. Conservative AM Darren Millar said on a radio phone-in show that individuals putting themselves at high risk through their own choice could be charged by the NHS.
Whilst I disagree fundamentally with many of the government’s reforms to the NHS, a distraction and expense the health service does not need, there is one commitment I do support and one for which ministers must firmly be held to account.
Before rushing to blame foreign visitors for putting a strain on the health service with some rather dubious statistics, perhaps the prime minister and his health secretary would do well to examine the policies of other departments of government that are both costing the NHS money and preventing NHS staff from doing what they are qualified to do.
