Tories’ rosy plan for the NHS is exposed as a stinker
The NHS chief executive, Simon Stevens, warned government the number of people waiting for surgery would soar [Image: Stefan Rousseau/PA].
We all called out Tory underfunding of the National Health Service while Philip Hammond was delivering his Budget speech on Wednesday.
Mr Hammond offered the NHS less than half the £4 billion (minimum) requested by the service’s boss, Simon Stevens. Mr Stevens recently went on record to ask when he could expect the minority Conservative government to begin delivering the £350 million a week that was promised by the leaders of the Leave campaign in the run-up to the EU referendum – so he clearly believe the health service needs much, much more cash.
What it’s getting is £1.6 billion extra in 2018-19, plus £900m extra in 2019-20 – but these are one-off payments rather than permanent additions to the budget, meaning the budget will be £126 billion in 2018-19 but will reduce by £700 million in 2019 and by £900 million in 2020. This is offset by previously-announced plans to increase the budget that mean the total in 2019-20, including the one-off payments, comes to £126.2 billion and in 2020-21 to £126.6 billion. That’s just £100 million more than was planned before Mr Hammond’s budget announcement.
There will be an extra £337m in emergency funding to boost NHS efforts to avoid its usual winter crisis in the next few months. Not enough.
And the NHS will get £3.5bn between now and 2020, as part of a separate injection of £10bn the NHS is due to receive to undertake repairs, build new facilities and modernise patient care. The rest of the money will be raised by selling off NHS land and buildings – but it is hard to tell how many such assets will need to be sold to raise that amount (and, of course, once they’re gone, they’re gone).
It is in this atmosphere that Labour’s Karen Lee – who continues to work as an NHS nurse while also representing Lincoln in the House of Commons – had to put Mr Javid straight on the condition of the health service:
Yesterday I made an intervention in the House after Sajid Javid described a rosy situation in our NHS. As a nurse, that certainly isn't the way I see things: pic.twitter.com/ZgbaVMuw8N
— Karen Lee (@Karen_karenelee) November 24, 2017
She’s not the only one with the facts at her fingertips:
https://twitter.com/DancingTheMind/status/934404746349350912
https://twitter.com/DancingTheMind/status/934405872578646016
https://twitter.com/DancingTheMind/status/934406784030334976
https://twitter.com/DancingTheMind/status/934407475532587013
https://twitter.com/DancingTheMind/status/934408187461107713
https://twitter.com/DancingTheMind/status/934409026523279365
https://twitter.com/DancingTheMind/status/934409518599102464
https://twitter.com/DancingTheMind/status/934410274521698304
Those are the facts.
So don’t let the mealy-mouthed Tories fool you with their rosy talk.
Look beyond the pretty facade and you’ll see the Tory plan for the NHS is rotten; it stinks.
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Is there no limit to tory treachery, they must believe that extraordinary times, (of their own making) call for extraordinary measures, so long as it does not affect them or the wealthy. Consider this, the carnage they are wreaking on Britain will have a long lasting effect, a present for the next government that makes a ‘no money left’ letter look amateur. History is filled with megalomaniac’s likes of the tories, from fiddles played to Rome burning to the Mein Kampf scenario, the common factor, to leave nothing behind of value. They are undoubtedly succeeding, every facet this countries citizens held dear is being irrevocably eroded.
The Tory philosophy on health is to drive the service into the ground then when people are in too much pain or their life is at risk, they will go private, failing that if you can’t afford it then that’s your own fault.
The fact that those people going private put their own Lives at greater risk than the NHS in its current state is lost on Tories.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11043262/Safety-of-private-hospitals-questioned-as-report-reveals-hundreds-die-unexpectedly.html
The only way to stop the Tories destroying the economy and dismantling the state is to vote them out at every opportunity. They simply don’t care whether people live or die and it is up to all thinking people to do everything they can to get these vile creatures out.