{"id":11085,"date":"2017-01-13T15:39:53","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T15:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=11085"},"modified":"2017-01-16T12:17:41","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T12:17:41","slug":"no-time-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=11085","title":{"rendered":"\u00e2\u20ac\u0098No time to waste\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00c2\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

As prime minister Theresa May continues to ignore the mounting funding problems faced by the NHS \u00e2\u20ac\u201d whose ongoing crisis was most shockingly exemplified by the story of a sick baby being treated on two plastic\u00c2\u00a0chairs pushed together to form a bed \u00e2\u20ac\u201d top NHS boss railed against continuing government austerity that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s risking lives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens told a public accounts committee on Wednesday<\/a> (January 11) that the prime minister\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s insistent claim that the NHS had received more funding from the government than it had asked for was patently untrue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt is a matter of fact that, like probably every part of public services, we got less than we asked for [in the spending review], so it would be stretching it to say the NHS got more,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Stevens said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Stevens outlined just how drastically the NHS will be underfunded.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bOver the next three years, funding is going to be highly constrained,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he told the committee.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIn 2018-19, real-terms NHS spending per person in England is going to go down, 10 years after Lehman Brothers [collapsed] and austerity began.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe all understand why that is, but let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not pretend that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not placing huge pressure on the service.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Stevens took aim at Theresa May\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s past experience as home secretary by noting that running the NHS was not comparable to running the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIn a sense what the NHS is being asked to do is to reverse engineer from a sum of money that Parliament has voted for it, to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0098All right then, what are you going to do?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Stevens pointed out. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe cannot change the age of Britain, but our demands are quite different from, say, the criminal justice system.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0098No longer viable\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Chief executive of NHS Providers Chris Hopson also gave evidence and went even further than Stevens, warning that if austerity continues the NHS as we know it will no longer be viable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI think the biggest concern, to be frank, is if we carry on the current trajectory, we begin to bring into question the entire sustainability of the NHS model,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he told the committee.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He recounted a recent meeting he had with NHS trust chairs and chief executives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe had 130 of them in a meeting in December, and for the first time in four years we had a serious conversation about the point at which public confidence in the NHS model of care \u00e2\u20ac\u201c delivered free at the point of use based on clinical need, not ability to pay \u00e2\u20ac\u201c comes into question,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Hopson noted.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Stevens\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and Hopson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s testimony for the public accounts committee came just after a fiery PMQs earlier in the day,<\/a> with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn highlighting that the Red Cross had claimed parts of the NHS could be described as being in a \u00e2\u20ac\u015bhumanitarian crisis\u00e2\u20ac\u0165.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

May dismissed these claims as overblown and shrugged off incidents such as the baby being treated on hospital chairs as isolated incidents.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But a growing number of professional medical organisations, including the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Nurses have all said that the health service is being overwhelmed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The latest figures show<\/a> that A&E departments have shut and turned down patients 140 times in December alone. A third of NHS trusts in England have said they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve issued alerts because they cannot cope with demand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As a cold snap pummels the UK this week, demand is expected to increase even more.\u00c2\u00a0The mother of the child who was being treated for acute tonsillitis on hospital chairs due to lack of beds, Rose Newman, railed against the prime minister for dismissing the incident at PMQs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0098Laughable\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bTheresa May said she accepted there had been a few instances where things like this happen,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 she told the Mirror.<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u015bThat is laughable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIn that waiting room, there was a woman sitting opposite me, head in hands, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what had happened to her but she had been there for eight hours,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 she added.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bAnother baby, younger than [my son] Jack, had a big rash across her, had to be put on a drip, and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been waiting more than six hours.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bSo \u00e2\u20ac\u0098a few instances\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, I saw more than that in one day in that one hospital. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a few instances, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe she even said that. She needs to wake up.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unite national office for health Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe agreed.\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u015bNo one knows more about the disaster the NHS is facing from lack of funding than those on the frontline \u00e2\u20ac\u201c nurses, paramedics, speech and language therapists, clinical psychologists among others,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bEach and every one of our members working in the health service have all told us the same story \u00e2\u20ac\u201cthat if the NHS doesn’t get the funding it so desperately needs, more and more patients\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 lives will be on the line.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bEven NHS boss Simon Stevens, who has never been one to exaggerate, has told MPs that the service is at breaking point as funding becomes ever more constrained. That the prime minister continues to ignore the man appointed to run NHS England demonstrates she is in denial and not focused on finding real solutions to these mounting problems.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lives in danger \u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Jarrett-Thorpe continued. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bAmong countries with comparable economies, the UK spends a smaller proportion of its GDP on health \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we can afford to spend more,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he added. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bProperly funding the NHS is only a matter of political will and we at Unite call on the government to stop burying their heads in the sand and take decisive action. Lives are in serious danger and there’s no time to waste.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey told the Independent<\/em> that the savings the NHS is being asked to make is also fuelling the health service crisis.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bHealth economists have consistently said that by forcing the NHS to make \u00c2\u014120bn in savings by 2020, the government is driving this service into crisis,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe government knows all too well that the funding for the service falls far short of what is needed to meet the challenges presented by the monstrous debts carried by hospital trusts, from an ageing population and from the pitiful absence of a reliable, decent social care service, which is urgently needed to take the pressure off the frontline NHS.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As prime minister Theresa May continues to ignore the mounting funding problems faced by the NHS \u00e2\u20ac\u201d whose ongoing crisis was most shockingly exemplified by the story of a sick baby being treated on two plastic\u00c2\u00a0chairs pushed together to form a bed \u00e2\u20ac\u201d top NHS boss railed against continuing government austerity that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s risking lives.   […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6854,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[29,44],"wps_subtitle":"NHS: Gov\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t can afford to spend more \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and must","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11085"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11086,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11085\/revisions\/11086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}