Cash boost for NHS plea

Nearly 2,000 campaigners including health staff, patients, trade union activists and others joined the Labour party last night (January 25) at a rally demanding a significant cash boost for the underfunded NHS.

The rally comes after a contentious PMQs on Wednesday (January 24) when Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn grilled prime minister Theresa May over an NHS winter crisis that’s seen 80 patients harmed or having died as a result of ambulance delays this winter, according to a whistle-blower.

Corbyn told MPs of a patient freezing to death after waiting for 16 hours in an ambulance.

“These are not isolated cases,” he said. “The NHS needs extra money, and it needs it now. People can see the NHS has been starved of resources. People are dying. GPs numbers are down. The NHS is in crisis. When will May face up to reality, and save the NHS from death by a thousand cuts?”

Labour is calling for an emergency £5bn budget for the NHS to stem the crisis in the health service – and in the wake of the Carillion collapse, the party is demanding an end to NHS privatisation.

“There must be no mistake: the NHS crisis is being caused by the political choices of this Tory government,” Corbyn told the crowds at Westminster’s Methodist Central Hall last night. “The government is failing staff, patients and their families across the whole country. We simply can’t go on like this.

“The government must bring forward an emergency budget for the NHS to give it the money it needs and end this crisis. The Tories are failing our NHS. Labour built the NHS 70 years ago and it will be the next Labour government that secures our NHS for the next 70 years.”

‘Amazing atmosphere’

Unite rep and paramedic Debbie Wilkinson (pictured below), who spoke at the rally last night, told UNITElive that the atmosphere last night was “amazing”.

“Right from the off it was very positive and uplifting – it actually gave me hope for the NHS,” she said.

And at the moment as the NHS faces its worst funding crisis in its 70 year history, hope is needed now more than ever.

Debbie has worked as an NHS paramedic for nearly 30 years – she estimates that amounts to more than 35,000 addresses she’s visited on 999 calls.

Her passion for the job is boundless, even working under conditions that would have prompted most of us to quit long ago.

“It’s a job I love and am very proud to do and I know we’re respected and trusted by the public,” she said.

But the stress of her job – the gruelling hours, skipped meals and pay so low she can’t makes ends meet unless she works overtime regularly – has, like so many NHS staff, made her ill.

She’s just recently returned from sick leave and has jumped right into the worst winter the NHS has ever seen.

“I asked some of my colleagues – what feels different this year?” she said. “Their answer was simple – the crisis we’ve all been expecting has arrived – sheer numbers are overwhelming us – but with no extra funding.”

“Normally when we go into an A&E department early in the morning, at 7 or 8 o’clock, it would be busy but not too bad,” Debbie explained. “But when I went in at 7 o’clock earlier this week, the department was packed. Instead of being one person in a cubicle there’re two.

“It’s filled with hospital beds, with trolleys, with people in the waiting room. Usually, at night we’d catch up and by the morning it would be clear the next day. That’s not happening anymore – we can’t catch up. It’s totally filled to capacity.”

Although Debbie says in Leeds where she works long wait times in ambulances aren’t as common, she’s spoken to other paramedics who say two to four hours waits have become the norm.

Breaking point

Debbie wholeheartedly agrees with Labour’s assertion that the NHS is not merely facing a winter crisis – it’s a year-round funding crisis that’s reached breaking point.

“I can’t see the crisis ending when winter ends,” she told UNITElive. “Of course winter pressures such as the flu add into it but summer comes and now you have different pressures. It’s just that we’re running at full capacity and we cannot cope.”

Debbie fears that things will only get worse as the NHS crisis is exacerbated by mounting recruitment and retentions problems.

The nursing staff shortage has been well-publicised, but Debbie says there’s a coming crisis in ambulance staffing as well.

“We are losing paramedics very, very quickly,” she warned. “People are going to work in prisons, as police or for example minor care nurses because they’re starting to realise that they have transferable skills that they can use in another setting. And they leave to go work in those other areas because it’s the same wage for far better working conditions.”

The only way this mass NHS staffing exodus happening across the board will be stopped, Debbie believes, is through proper pay rises.

“We have endured seven years of pay cuts,” she said in her speech last night. “I live alone and I’m struggling financially. If I don’t work at least one day of overtime a week, I can’t manage. That’s not to mention the extra hours we work after each and every shift and the missed meal breaks.

“It’s no good this government telling us how much they value us, then refusing to give us a pay rise,” she added. “I’m afraid hypocrisy doesn’t pay my mortgage.”

And she added that it’s only through a proper funding settlement from the government – one that funds social care and mental health services too – that the NHS will go on.

Debbie last night was joined by two other NHS workers who spoke at the rally, as well as Corbyn and shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth.

The rally was the first in a series of events taking place this year as the NHS celebrates its 70^th birthday fighting for its very survival.

Join us on Saturday, February 3 for a national #OurNHS demonstration organised by the People’s Assembly and Health Campaigns Together, and supported by Unite and other health unions. Find out more here.