All over the country, health professionals are raising the loudest possible alarm over the acute crisis in the NHS and social care services. Many hospitals and ambulance trusts have declared critical incidents and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine has said that 300–500 people are dying each week because of delays in emergency care.
The critical shortage of hospital beds – 2.4 per 1,000 people against 7.8 in Germany – is made much worse by hospitals being unable to safely discharge patients needing home care, which is now often not available due to cuts in council funding.
Systematic underfunding of NHS infrastructure and low pay for health and social care workers are making it extremely hard to retain and recruit staff. A third of all junior doctors are planning to quit the NHS due to the poor pay and working conditions. Nurses have seen steep cuts in the real value of their wages over the past 12 years and many can no longer meet the basic needs of themselves and their families. The Royal College of Nursing has voted to go on strike for the first time ever.
To add insult to injury, NHS trusts are paying exorbitant fees to private staffing agencies – money which the government refuses to spend on increasing basic rates of pay for regular staff.
Meanwhile, the creeping privatisation of the NHS continues, with ever larger amounts of public money being spent on outsourced health services run for private profit. And the full scale of the scandalous misspending of potentially billions of pounds on defective PPE and Test & Trace contracts is only now coming to light.
Unlike other parties, the Green Party fully backs NHS and social care workers in their struggle for decent pay. We’re also unequivocally opposed to the ongoing privatisation of healthcare and want to see social care services – which are inseparable from healthcare – provided free on the basis of need.
There are many other ways in which Green Party policies would create a healthier society, by reducing air pollution, providing accessible green spaces for all, creating better walking and cycling routes, and tackling the poverty and gross inequality that are at the root of so much illness.
But right now it’s time to take a stand for a free, comprehensive and properly funded health and social care system that works fairly and effectively for all.
Dr Pallavi Devulapalli
Health, Social Care & Public Health Spokesperson
The Green Party
