VOTE2019 NHS NHS
What’s the difference between a python eating a hamster and the Tories being in charge of the NHS?
Absolutely nothing, according to former Conservative prime minister John Major, who famously quipped that the NHS is about as safe with Boris Johnson and Micheal Gove “as a pet hamster would be with a hungry python”.
Many say the NHS is already half way down the python’s gullet after nearly 10 years of Tory rule – even without the risk of Johnson selling it to Trump – and that the only way the health service can be saved is if Labour extracts it from the serpent’s jaws.
But what will Labour’s NHS rescue mission look like?
For starters, the most immediate threat to the NHS – Tory plans to include the health service in a trade deal with the Trump administration – will be quashed.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said, “The NHS is up for grabs by US corporations in a Trump trade plot.
“It has been revealed that the cost of drugs
RESCUE PLAN
and medicines has repeatedly been discussed between US and UK trade officials. Labour won’t let Donald Trump get his hands on our National Health Service.”
Stopping the Tories from doing any more damage to the NHS is just the first step. After the rescue will come the resuscitation, rehabilitation and strengthening of the health service. Labour will restore a publicly administered, publicly accountable, comprehensive and universal NHS. It has pledged a £26bn in real terms funding boost.
Instead of the staff and skills shortages crippling the health service at moment, Labour will invest £330m in staff training, legislate for safe staffing and bring back NHS bursaries to train 24,000 more nurses and midwives.
GP training places will be expanded by 50 per cent to 5,000 a year, helping to deliver 27m extra appointments, while the number of health visitors and school nurses will also be increased.
On top of ending the staffing crisis and the misery it causes for patients and over- stretched NHS workers, a Labour
22 uniteWORKS Winter 2019
It’s the eleventh hour for our NHS – and only Labour can save it
government will end hospital car parking charges, scrap all prescription charges in England and give mental health parity of importance.
In addition, a National Care Service to tackle the social care crisis will be set up and health inequalities legislated against through a new Future Generations Wellbeing Act.
Crucially, conditions will also be improved for NHS workers, with Agenda for Change pay for public health staff, guarantees for fair wages, increases in training and professional development budgets and an end to health service privatisation, including through wholly owned subsidiaries.
NHS staff are in desperate need of these reforms, said Unite assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail because under the Tories “privatisation, fragmentation and cash starvation has left many underpaid and overworked”.
“This is why in February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November of this year Unite NHS workers have balloted and taken strike action,” she explained.
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