Think again about the NHS. Act now.

We do not accept that our children should go hungry and that our elders must suffer from the cold this winter. Both are wrong and both policies will increase pressure on the NHS.

Our NHS is a matter of life and death, (and the working class die first).

Good healthcare makes a country healthier and wealthier. No country can thrive with poor healthcare. No country should have millions unable to work due to a lack of health care.

Healthcare is a human right. The generation that defeated fascism gifted to us, their descendants, the best system of healthcare in the world. This was according to the US Commonwealth Fund. We are now ranked 10 out of 11. We want our inheritance back. No ifs no buts.

The NHS has been bled dry by privatisation, by bringing in the market into healthcare, by austerity and cuts to real term funding, by appalling workforce planning, by letting maternity as a service decline, by the frightening damage to our mental health service, by cuts to beds and inadequate staffing and by the neglect of the fabric of our NHS buildings. These have all caused grave harm some of which the Darzi report mentions.

But each problem can be reversed by government policy if they so choose. These were policies of the Conservatives. They must not be the policy for Labour too.

Professor Danny Dorling has just exposed the cruel cost of austerity to our children. Our children have been hurt more than any other nation by years of austerity. They are becoming smaller in size,bringing back stories of how in world war one too many men were too small,too stunted in size, by poverty to fight. There must be a full break from this to allow our children to thrive.

Our NHS staff work hard and with great skill, kindness and talent but they cannot cope with this imposed poverty of resources, disorganisation and crumbling buildings.

Mothers are describing traumatic birthing experiences in numbers to big too ignore.Midwives report the problems in the labour wards and in ante-natal and post-natal care. We don’t need to repeat the evidence already given in numerous reports, from respected organisations.

Mr Starmer ( a Labour prime Minister) is refusing to respond to the emergency on our doorsteps this winter until a set of “reforms” are introduced.

Mr Starmer says his priorities are digitisation, ( Lots of money there for the big tech companies but we need midwives.) moving care out of hospitals and producing a healthier population.

We urgently need a publicly owned, not for profit, user designed social care system.That will take huge political will and investment but would make so many lives better. Is this too much for us Mr Starmer?

The government must choose to invest now to achieve vital short-term and long-term goals in our healthcare. They must also design our health care as a public service, not a pig’s trough for the rich to root in for tasty morsels. Governments spent five times the cost of the NHS on Quantitative Easing, they spent billions on the Bankers’ crisis, and they are spending billions on the war in Ukraine. See this article for more on Government spending. The NHS too is a crisis that the government must tackle The last government got hammered in the General Election for its policies. Following the same policies will get the same response.

There must be urgent action.

What are we supposed to do in the meantime? Die quietly? Suffer silently? Sit in pain, and get worse for hour upon hour in A and E? Should we be silent while staff are underpaid and overworked? We need action now before this winter’s crisis kills more of us.

We need action on maternity. Mothers in labour cannot wait. We know all we need to know about how bad the situation is. The reports are numerous. Women and babies need action now.

The GP service is badly damaged and the GPs need a positive response from this government now. All private companies running GP surgeries should be removed. Every available GP should be employed.

Patients live longer with consistent access to a GP. The appalling statistics for life expectancy, an life expectancy in good health in poorer areas of Britain make this especially important. In Liverpool the gap in life expectancy between richer and poorer areas is large and the “rich” areas of Liverpool are far from the richest in the country “Life expectancy at birth in Liverpool, is 76 years, although this masks variation, with an average of 76.4 years in Anfield and Everton compared to 83.1 years in Childwall and Wavertree.”The Office for National Statistics said

In 2018 to 2020, male healthy life expectancy (HLE) at birth in the most deprived areas was 52.3 years, compared with 70.5 years in the least deprived areas. Female HLE at birth in the most deprived areas was 51.9 years, almost 20 years fewer than those living in the least deprived areas (70.7 years).

Physician and anaesthetist associates are a dangerous slap in the face for people who want qualified doctors. The mistakes made by PS’s are then blamed on doctors. Doctors have been denied work when it has been given to these roles. Some GP practices have had only one GP on the phone while patients see PAs. ( This is quite an old article but we have heard reports of this more recently too)This must be changed and the BMA have made it clear how that should be changed.

We say

• Fund and organise action now to improve the situation for this coming winter, including lifting financial restrictions, opening more beds recruiting staff, make more space available.
• Improve maternity funding immediately so hospital managers are not pushing staff to cope with too few resources, and too few staff. Improve the maternity tariff. Improve the ratios of midwives to birthing mothers. Bring back health visitors. Tackle infant mortality. Try to win back some of the staff who have left in disgust at the poor state of maternity. Heed what women are telling you about maternity. Stop the epidemic of birth trauma
• Save Liverpool Women’s Hospital, the largest in the UK. No to mergers.
• Employ more GPs not less qualified substitutes. Kick US corporations out of our GP practices.
• Let’s get back to a national, publicly provided health care, for all, free at the point of need. The poison of privatisation, outsourcing, insidiously introduced charging and the business model has done great harm.
• Recognise the harm the ICB system that has been introduced and imposed into the NHS is doing.”And yet … the way the NHS is being transformed is set to radically undermine it as a universal, comprehensive health care system focused on providing healthcare free at the point of use and according to need. Instead, the focus will be on the saving money and the prevention of ill health at a population level, with services designed from the analysis of massive data sets and delivered on the basis of what’s considered ‘best’ for different population groups.”
• Our health records are and must be private. We know there is huge value and potential profit in the data to be obtained from a large and well-established national health service but that wealth belongs to the people, including the poorest of us. Use only an NHS digitalisation system agreed with doctors and nurses. No external system owned by dubious US corporations should be allowed near the NHS. We saw what Fujitsu did to the sub-postmasters.

You can help.

Every MP in Merseyside is Labour and most of those in Cheshire. We do not have to wait for a general election. Our MPs must step up and save lives in the NHS.

What you can do to help us encourage the Government to respond to the threat to life and limb in the current NHS situation?

Talk to family, friends, workmates, fellow students, and neighbours about the need to rescue the NHS. Every great campaign starts with talking about it.

Write to or email your MP.

Ask for an appointment with your MP.

Give out campaign leaflets in your street.

Put up a poster calling for action for the NHS.

Raise the issue of the NHS with your union. Unions helped found the NHS. They can help persuade the government to act and to act urgently.

Join our campaign

Truly we wont know what we have lost until its gone. Fight for it.