1,000 NHS employees again Labour’s plan to chop hospital ready lists
Over 1,000 NHS frontline workers have backed Labour’s plan to cut hospital waiting lists in just the past 24 hours.
Keir Starmer has vowed to clear waits of more than 18 weeks within five years of taking office if he becomes PM.
Labour has said it will create an additional 40,000 appointments, scans and operations each week during evenings and weekends and double the numbers of scanners. The party is warning that the treatment backlog, which currently stands at 7.54million, could rise to 10million if the Conservatives are in office for another five years.
NHS workers have been signing an open letter in support of Labour’s NHS blueprint. It states: “As professionals in the NHS, we see the harm that is caused by out-of-control waiting lists. With waiting lists at a record 7.5 million, this can’t go on. Behind every late diagnosis is a patient at risk, in discomfort and, in the worse cases, someone who will be denied the treatment that could have saved their life. It is time for change.”
The letter says the last Labour government “showed that it’s possible to cut waiting lists when you give the NHS the backing it needs and when you work with staff instead of blaming them”.
“It is clear that the current government is unable to deliver this, it adds. “Labour’s first steps for government, with a mission to clear the backlog in the NHS over the next 5 years, is the change that patients need. It is a change that the NHS needs. And it is the change that we support.”
Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “NHS staff are crying out for change, and only Labour has a plan to deliver it. Together with the brilliant people working in the NHS, Labour will get the service back on its feet and make it fit for the future. On 4th July, I’m asking Mirror readers to vote for the NHS, vote Labour.”
In an interview with the Mirror yesterday, Mr Starmer said: “This has to be done with NHS staff, not to NHS staff, so we won’t do what this Government does and bash and blame NHS staff. We will work with them on this.
