JUST days after Health Secretary Hunt was found to be acting unlawfully with his plan to close the A&E and other facilities at Lewisham Hospital, the coalition, through Prime Minister Cameron, has announced that £500 million is to be put into cutting waiting times in England’s A&Es.
It is the height of Tory cynicism to announce a £500 million bail-out of the ‘most hard pressed’ A&Es when the money is to come out of the existing NHS budget, which is currently being cut by £20bn with a further £30bn of NHS cuts under consideration.
The BMA said yesterday: ‘At a time when they are demanding cuts of £20 billion across the NHS, this is nothing more than papering over the cracks and is recognition that their austerity programme has hospitals facing ever-increasing demands with diminishing resources.’
Prime Minister David Cameron has already said that it is a ‘short-term measure’. In fact, the money – which will come from existing budgets – is to be deployed in the most hard-pressed A&E units and in community services for the elderly, and facilities such as pharmacies.
What is happening is that Cameron and Co are trying to show that they are doing something, because the savage cuts that they have made to the NHS will see a massive crisis this autumn and winter when the A&Es will be filled to overflowing, with patients on trolleys and in tents in hospital grounds awaiting treatment.
Already, more than 300,000 patients have waited longer than they should have – a 39% rise on the previous year. The prime minister said yesterday: ‘Compared with three years ago, a million extra people are visiting A&E.’ (The BMA has already pointed out that this is the result of Tory austerity).
Cameron added: ‘The money helps in the short term, but in the longer term what we’ve got to do is get our hospitals working better with GP surgeries and also get our hospitals working better with social care departments so that the frail elderly – who are often the ones who are going in and out of A&E – are better cared for in the community.’
Meanwhile, the A&E at Chase Farm Hospital is to close this November, with the Maternity unit to follow.
If the government were serious, it would cancel this closure right away, and cancel the closure plans for scores of District General Hospitals in London and up and down the country, along with their A&Es.
Dr Clifford Mann, president of the College of Emergency Medicine, commented that: ‘It seems disingenuous, and in many ways demoralising, to those that managed to apparently perform satisfactorily, to understand or realise that they will benefit from this not at all.’
The truth is that the government is seeking by a short-term expenditure, involving no new money, to survive a massive winter crisis that could bring it down, in order to proceed with the mass closure programme in the spring. This is the cynical policy of the coalition.
The coalition position is quite clear. It is that millions of people are using A&Es unnecessarily, and that the mass closure programme is necessary, since the current health budget cannot be afforded. The problem is that these millions of people know that there is not going to be any care in the community. Once the A&Es are closed, along with many District General Hospitals, they will have to look after themselves and die at home.
The reality is that as soon as the winter crisis is over, the ‘problem hospitals’ and many District General Hospitals will be closed and patients transferred into the community.
Millions of people will oppose such measures. The trade unions must speak out for them and act with them to defend the NHS. The Tories must be given a real autumn and winter crisis that sees them being removed from office.
The full strength of the trade unions must be used to defend the NHS. The TUC must oppose all A&E and District General Hospital closures and support and call strike actions and occupations to stop them. To win the struggle it must call a general strike to bring down the coalition and bring in a workers government and socialism.
This is the only way to defend the NHS and see that it develops and continues to provide free first-class care at the point of need as part of a socialist society.
