Save Liverpool Women’s Hospital rally

Margaret Greenwood MP for Wirral West

Thank you – it’s a pleasure to be here today and I would like to thank the organisers for giving me the opportunity to talk about what’s happening to our NHS.

We’re all here because we believe in the NHS as a:

• comprehensive
• Universal
• publicly owned
• and publicly delivered service

and because we know we must fight for its future.

We know that the NHS is in crisis – and it’s a crisis of the government’s own making.

Waiting lists for routine treatment recently hit record highs of 7.68 million.

And there are well over 100,000 staffing vacancies across the NHS.

Many nurses, midwives, doctors, ambulance workers and other dedicated NHS staff are over-stretched and facing burnout.

Meanwhile, the government continues to underfund the service and increase opportunities for private health companies to make profits off the back of people’s ill health.

The Tories’ undermining of the NHS is a political choice – and they are being found out.

Earlier this year, the highly respected Professor Sir Michael Marmot said:

“If you had the hypothesis that the government was seeking to destroy the National Health Service…all the data that we’re seeing are consistent with that hypothesis.”

When asked if we are stumbling or sleepwalking towards a privatised health care system, he added that government ministers are “not behaving as if they want to preserve our NHS.”

That is a damning indictment of the Tory government.

We should not be surprised, because, the truth is, the Tories have made no secret of their desire to privatise the NHS over decades.

In 1988, John Redwood and Oliver Letwin wrote a pamphlet which has been seen by many as a blueprint for the privatisation of the NHS.

Fast forward 20 years to 2008 and Jeremy Hunt, now the Chancellor of the Exchequer, co-authored a book which included the line: “Our ambition should be to break down the barriers between private and public provision, in effect denationalising the provision of healthcare in Britain.”

The Tories have two tactics when it comes to destroying our NHS.

One is to legislate to open it up to greater privatisation, and the other is to starve it of funding.

One of the key measures in the 2012 Health and Social Care Act was to allow NHS Foundation Trusts to, in effect, earn 49% of their income from treating private patients.

This is wholly unacceptable.

The 2022 Health and Care Act created 42 statutory Integrated Care Boards and Integrated Care Partnerships.

The latter are able to include representatives of private companies, yet they are tasked with preparing the integrated care strategy for an area.

This integrated care strategy sets out how the assessed needs in relation to an area are to be met by the exercise of functions of the Integrated Care Board, which is the commissioning body.

This is outrageous.

There should be no private interests influencing where public money is spent on health and care.

And there should be no room for conflicts of interest.

ICSs have been designed to be vehicles for cuts.

In May, it was reported that ICSs will have to make average efficiency savings of almost 6% – the equivalent of £6 billion across England – to meet their financial requirements this year.

For Cheshire and Merseyside, the ‘efficiency’ target for this year is 5% – or £57.9 million.

How can the NHS in Cheshire and Merseyside make cuts of £57 million when waiting lists are sky-high and there are insufficient staff?

How can the needs of patients be met?

The simple answer is: they can’t be. And they can’t be because of political choice.

It doesn’t need to be this way.

If the government continues to underfund the NHS, increasing numbers of patients will be left, in pain and anxiety, without treatment.

And some will be so desperate they will pay to go private and pay for services which they are entitled to receive free of charge on the NHS.

So I want to finish with this:

Our NHS is in jeopardy.

The government is starving it of resources – and patients and staff are paying the price.

The next government must prioritise the NHS by giving it the significant increase in funding that it needs, and it must put an end to privatisation.

Without a commitment to the NHS as a well-resourced public service, our NHS will not survive.

So it’s vital we continue our fight to save our National Health Service.

I would like to thank each and every one of you for keeping the faith and keeping up the fight. Together we can – and will – save our NHS.