Safer to remain

The NHS is safer if the UK stays in the EU, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said today (June 14) at a TUC event, where he was joined by health workers, MPs  and trade union leaders, including Unite general secretary Len McCluskey.

The Labour Party leader hit out against leaders of the Leave campaign who have said that a Brexit would mean more money for the NHS.

“Most of the Leave side – the Tory right and UKIP – don’t even want there to be an NHS,” he argued.

“The millionaire funder of the Leave side, Arron Banks said, ‘If it were up to me, I’d privatise the NHS’,” Corbyn pointed out. “Nigel Farage called for an insurance-based system to replace the NHS.

“Michael Gove is co-author of a book that says the NHS is ‘no longer relevant in the 21st century’,” he added. “[This is] a book which calls for the NHS to be replaced by a new system of health provision in which people would pay money into individual health accounts.

“And it was Boris Johnson who said, ‘If people have to pay for NHS services, they will value them more’.

“A Vote to Leave is a vote to put our NHS in jeopardy, in the hands of those who want to break it up to end it as a service free at the point of use.”

‘Listen to NHS staff’

Corbyn praised the work of NHS staff, a significant portion of which hails from the EU.

“I’ve worked for NHS staff – the NHS has helped me and my family,” he said. “I wouldn’t advocate Remain unless I knew our NHS was better off that way.”

“Fifty-two thousand EU nationals work in our NHS, as doctors, nurses and physiotherapists. They contribute to our country and save our lives.

“EU nationals are 4.7 percent of our population,” Corbyn added.  “Yet they are five percent of NHS nurses and ten percent of NHS doctors.

“If you care about our NHS, don’t just listen me, listen to NHS staff – every NHS workers’ union and royal college is backing Remain.”

One such NHS worker at the TUC event was Unite member Beverly Wallace, a biomedical scientist, who knows from first-hand experience just how important membership in the EU is for the work she does.

“The UK is at the heart of the EU research network,” she said. “We get more health research funding from the EU than any other European country. That money goes straight to universities and places like Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, which they can use to integrate primary care into the development of new medicines.

“The money that helps patients comes from Europe – Britain doesn’t have enough funds to do it on our own,” she added.  “Diseases do not respect borders, but working with other EU countries we can beat them. When it comes to health, we should be cooperating more with Europe, not less.”

Unite member and biomedical scientist Beverly Wallace with Jeremy Corbyn

This was a point echoed by TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady. She highlighted that last year alone, the UK received £232m of EU money for health research and development, which, she said was the “largest slice of funding received by any member state.”

She argued that proper funding for the NHS depends on a strong economy – after what leading economists unanimously predict to be an economic shock following a potential Brexit, public spending, especially for an already chronically underfunded health service, would take a nosedive.

‘Fantasy economics’

Today’s event at the TUC was held just hours after prominent Leave campaigner and Tory employment minister Priti Patel struggled to explain on the Today programme her campaign’s promises.

The Leave campaign has previously pledged that an extra ÂŁ100m each week would become available for the NHS if the UK withdrew from the EU.

When asked to clarify how she could guarantee such funding when it is actually governments which make such decisions and not the Leave campaign, she stumbled, noting only that the government of the day will have “the options and choices about how they will spend that money”.

Commenting on Patel’s claims, Unite assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail called the Leave campaign’s pledges “fantasy economics”, which she said were also “cruel and deceitful”.

“[Patel’s] government has starved the NHS of funds and created chaos with a needless reorganisation that has cost it billions that ought to have gone to patient care,” she said. “She is part of a government that has alienated doctors and will place trainee nurses in financial ruin.  How dare she ask for our members and our communities’ votes?

“I believe that Unite members and the public generally can see through this shameful and hypocritical sham,” Cartmail added.

“The NHS is under threat.  But not from Brussels.  It is under threat from this government and its agenda of cuts and privatisation.”

Unite assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey also seized on Patel’s comments from today.

“She and the Leave campaign expect us to believe that they will magic up £100m for our NHS on the day we leave the EU,” he said.

“But this spending  is not her decision to make; the government of the day will decide that.

“What’s more, the money we get back from the EU goes to farming, fishing, the Northern Ireland peace process, tourism, science, the arts, and support for needy communities,” McCluskey explained.  “What cash can they expect in her brave new world – it looks like they will be left the crumbs.  This will kill our communities.

“Priti Patel illustrated today the dishonour at the heart of the Leave campaign,” he argued.  “She is making promises to people who want to be listened to, not fobbed off with magic beans.  This is unethical.”

Don’t trust them

McCluskey explained why the union was calling on Unite members to vote Remain.

“We will not let our members wake up on June 24th to discover that their futures are now in the hands of Johnson, Redwood, Patel and Gove,” he said.

“These are members of a government that has served them dreadfully for the past 6 years – they are advocates of and addicted to the most miserable austerity, the real reason why our hospitals are at breaking point and wages are still to recover from pre-crash levels.

“My message to our members and to working people everywhere is do not give them your vote,” McCluskey added.  “They do not deserve your trust.”

• Pics by Mark Thomas