‘Labour faces a good larger mountain to revive the NHS than the ’97 problem’
As Labour’s last Health Secretary, I’ve been thinking about the scale of the challenge awaiting the next one if Labour wins on Thursday.
My assessment is bleak. We face an even bigger mountain in 2024 to restore the NHS than in 1997. If that was Mont Blanc, this one is Everest. Back then, Labour had the same problem with crumbling hospitals and long waits but we had more options to raise desperately needed NHS funding.
Now, we would inherit an economy shrunken by Brexit and the highest tax burden in history. Our room for manoeuvre is far more restricted. On top of that, 14 years of severe cuts to local councils have left an already struggling social care system in a much worse state than the one we found in 1997.
Every day, thousands are going into hospital unnecessarily because private care companies instruct their staff to call 999 if they encounter any difficulties. Once there, people face long stays in hospital because of the difficulty in arranging new care packages to support their discharge.
At the end of last week, I checked the number of people in hospital beds across England deemed medically fit but unable to be sent home. It was a staggering 12,359.
All this is worrying enough and that is before we consider the position of the NHS workforce. I remember the late, great Frank Dobson telling me the best NHS policies are those that look after the staff. There is no care for patients if we don’t care for staff. We should listen to them and look after them, he wisely advised.
One of the reasons why the NHS is in such a poor state is because this Government has treated them as the enemy. Today is the fourth day of the junior doctors’ strike and, coming after the first-ever strike by RCN nurses, it tells you all you need to know about how Tories treat NHS staff.
By contrast, last Saturday I was with Wes Streeting as he listened to the concerns of overseas nurses on the anniversary of Windrush. I left feeling very worried about what they said.
But the fact we have a Shadow Health Secretary prepared to give up his weekend to listen to them gave me hope. I realise this reads like a litany of doom and gloom. But I lay it out like this as I want anyone who is still undecided to focus carefully on the NHS before casting their vote.
A vote for the Tories or Reform is a vote against the NHS. One wants to run it down; the other to replace it. Farage’s claim the NHS model doesn’t work is utter rubbish. The last Labour government left behind an NHS with the lowest-ever waiting lists and the highest-ever patient satisfaction. We’ve climbed the mountain before. We can restore our NHS.
