‘Get a grip’

The Prime Minister shrugged off the mounting NHS crisis yesterday (January 11) as a “small number” of incidents, even as 20 hospitals across England declared that they could no longer guarantee patient safety because of overcrowding.

Theresa May’s insistence that the NHS was not in meltdown came as the NHS England chief, the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Nurses all said that the system is being overwhelmed.

Separately, May also received an open letter from 75 leading NHS organisations and voices calling for cross party “fundamental action” to tackle severely depleted health and care budgets.

Responding to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s question about the substandard hospital treatment of a toddler at PMQs yesterday, May said, “I accept there have been a small number of incidents where unacceptable practises have taken place. We don’t want these things to happen. But what matters is how you then deal with them.”

May also described the Red Cross’ statement that the NHS was facing a “humanitarian crisis” as “irresponsible and overblown” and rubbished the opposition’s call for more funding – despite Britain not spending as much on its health services as many other developed nations.

She said, “The only way that we can ensure that we’ve got enough funding for the NHS is strong economy.”

Replying to May’s answers, Corbyn mocked the prime minister’s recent “shared society” initiative.

He said, “Well, we certainly got that. More people sharing hospital corridors on trolleys, more people sharing waiting areas at A&E departments. More people sharing in anxiety generated by this government.

‘In denial’

“Our NHS, Mr Speaker, is in crisis, but the Prime Minister is in denial.”

As evidence of the increasing pressures on the NHS continued to roll in yesterday – with new NHS numbers showing that around 2.1m people waited in A&E for more than 4 hours in 2015/16 compared to 1.6m the year before – a YouGov poll released today (January 12) shows that the majority of the public are now more likely to support a tax increase to fund the NHS.

The poll found that 42 per cent of people would support a boost in health care funding through a penny on the basic rate of income tax, while 37 per cent would oppose it. In 2014, the number of people opposed to such as measure stood at 57 per cent, with 34 per cent supporting it.

However Unite national officer for health, Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe, said the government could afford to properly finance the NHS without raising income tax if big business and the super-rich were made to pay their fair share.

“We have one of the biggest economies in the world. If you look at the amount of tax big businesses and the wealthy are avoiding, it’s more than enough to pay for extra NHS funding,” he said.

“But the Tories are not interested in funding in the NHS, because they’re set on the “slash, trash and privatise” agenda.

“First they slash funding and then the services get trashed as not being good enough, which is what’s happening now. As a response to this, there are then attempts to privatise services in the guise of improving the system.”

Jarrett-Thorpe added, “Unite stands for a progressive system taxation and a fully funded and functioning NHS. The government needs to get a grip and avert this crisis, before it starts costing people their lives.”