THE Quarterly Monitoring Report of the King’s Fund does not pull any punches about the future that the Tory-led coalition has planned out for the NHS.
It states that the ‘NHS financial crunch is getting closer’ and that ‘Financial confidence within the NHS is ebbing away, with a financial crisis looming in 2015/16, just after the next general election.’
The King’s Fund points out that, ‘One in eight trusts and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) will overspend their budgets for the financial year just ended.’ The fund points out that ‘only 40 per cent of finance directors in hospitals and other providers are confident their organisation will achieve financial balance in 2014/15. This figure plunges to just 16 per cent in 2015/16.’
In fact, on top of the £20bn cuts programme that is in operation currently, ‘the implementation of the £3.8 billion Better Care Fund will see an additional £1.9 billion transferred from the NHS to support joint working between health and social care from April 2015. To compensate for this, NHS England has estimated that hospitals will need to reduce emergency admissions by 15 per cent.’
The fund adds: ‘Meanwhile, pressures on hospital waiting lists are growing, with more than 360,000 additional people waiting for treatment in January 2014, compared to the same month last year.’
Dr Peter Carter, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said: ‘The NHS is currently managing to deliver for patients only by overstretching its staff and pushing the limits of its budget. This is not sustainable and the NHS must listen to the concerns of its clinical staff as well as its finance directors.’ He added that patients must not pay for the NHS’s financial crisis.
The King’s Fund Quarterly Report shows that immediately the 2015 general election is over, the new government, if it continues with the present government’s cuts policies, which both the current ruling coalition and the current opposition are pledged to do, will have to cut and close a large number of NHS hospitals.
So far, the organised trade union movement has stood idly by and watched as A&Es and maternity units have been closed, saying that it is the job of the community to stop such closures, not the trade unions.
This disgraceful abdication of duty must be stopped. The passage of the Health Care Bill into law will allow the Health Secretary to close down A&Es, maternity units, and entire hospitals as the crisis of capitalism demands.
Meanwhile, the TUC continues to hide behind the Congress resolution that was carried two years ago.
Then, the TUC Congress voted for the TUC general council to ‘consider the practicalities of the calling of a general strike’.
The cowardly General Council is still considering the the ‘practicalities’ and has refused to call a single day of strike action, never mind a general strike, to defeat the government’s massive attacks on the NHS, the Welfare State and defend all of the basic rights of the working class.
Union leaders like Unite’s McCluskey content themselves with warning Labour leader Miliband that, if he loses the 2015 election because he will not fight the austerity measures, the trade unions will form a new workers party.
This is just another trade union leadership evasion of responsibility. Everybody knows that Miliband will match the Tories cut for cut. Waiting until after the general election to see which way Miliband intends to betray the working class is just another TUC abdication of leadership and duty.
The trade union leaders must get off their knees and fight or be removed. The way to defend the NHS and all of the gains of the working class is for the TUC to call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism.
This is the big issue that will be discussed at the News Line-ATUA Conference at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square on Saturday May 10 (See add page 2). Make sure that you are there!
