NHS: Long-term Strategy

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

A Salford health worker said to me recently:

“We visited a seriously ill man who was frightened of being taken to hospital and made it clear he was at risk of death and that he needed urgent treatment. He and his wife told us that when he was in last, he was left on a corridor for hours, he was not offered food, he is diabetic and could have died.”

He had waited hours. They went on:

“I found it heart breaking that this man would rather die than put himself in that situation again as he could not face the way he had been treated.”

Our constituents are frightened, and many are choosing not even to attempt to access vital treatment for fear of what will happen to them. Our health workers’ mental and physical health is deteriorating with the stress and pressures they are facing.

Of course, the Government claim they have given the NHS the funding it needs, but this just is not true. Of the half a billion pounds of so-called early discharge funding announced by the Prime Minster recently, only £200 million—40%—has actually made it to the NHS and local authorities. The BBC reports that, to help the health service cope with winter demand as well as pay for advances in medicine, the NHS budget has traditionally risen by an average of 4%, but since 2010—since this Government have been in charge—the average annual rate of increase has been half that. The King’s Fund calls this a “decade of neglect”, and it is right.

This Government are destroying our NHS. They are destroying our constituents’ faith in our NHS, and now they are destroying the very workforce who try to hold it together. The Government can solve this crisis: they can fund the NHS, scrap the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill and actually listen to our NHS key workers when they ring this alarm.