THE NEW Labour government launched its massive attack on the NHS yesterday, with PM Sir Keir Starmer threatening that the NHS must ‘reform or die’.
Starmer launched a report by Lord Darzi, threatening ‘the biggest reimagining of the NHS’ since it was formed, with a new 10-year plan for the health service to be published in the coming months.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced ‘three key areas of reform: the transition to a digital NHS, moving more care from hospitals to communities, and focusing efforts on prevention over sickness’.
Streeting threatened: ‘Rather than a country with an NHS, we’re going to have an NHS with a country attached to it if we’re not careful, and more likely an NHS that goes bust.’
Lord Darzi was the author of the notorious ‘Darzi Plan’ of the previous Brown Labour government in 2008, which intended to replace GP surgeries with ‘polyclinics’.
The Darzi plan was scrapped by the incoming Tory-LibDem coalition government in 2010 and replaced by another attempt to destroy the NHS, led by Andrew Landsley, under which ‘Clinical Commissioning Groups’, NHS Foundation Trusts and other privatisation bodies were formed.
In his new vicious attack on the NHS, Darzi claimed yesterday that there are ‘falling levels of productivity in hospitals, with rises in staff not matched by increases in the numbers of patients being seen’.
This has meant ‘hospitals have been sucking up an ever-increasing amount of the budget, when more care should be shifted into the community, Darzi claimed.
His report described General Hospital A&E departments as in an ‘awful state’.
Darzi claimed: ‘Although I have worked in the NHS for more than 30 years, I have been shocked by what I have found during this investigation – not just in the health service, but in the state of the nation’s health.’
Starmer said: ‘The NHS is at a fork in the road and we have a choice about how it should meet these rising demands. Raise taxes on working people or reform to secure its future. We know working people can’t afford to pay more, so it is reform or die.’
RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive, Professor Nicola Ranger, responded: ‘Patients faced a tough summer in emergency departments and the NHS itself is already fearing another deeply challenging winter.
‘Nursing staff will stand up for their patients and continue to challenge care standards and why nobody should face treatment in a corridor or armchair. They can provide high quality care and believe ministers, with their advice, can make that happen.
‘Current failure to invest in community health services is directly linked to declining population health and the intolerable pressures in hospitals. Nursing staff who deliver preventative care have seen their numbers collapse over the last decade and patients can’t wait another ten years for this to be fixed.’
Professor Philip Banfield, BMA council chair, said: ‘The previous government gaslit doctors and refused to acknowledge the damage caused by years of underinvestment … It’s no secret that the newly elected government inherited an NHS widely wrecked from year upon year of relative underinvestment – especially in general practice.’
The NHS is considered the greatest gain of the working class.
It was brought in by the 1945 Labour government after six years of imperialist slaughter in the Second World War.
Today, with British capitalism utterly bankrupt, the NHS is under attack by the ruling class and will only be protected by working class action.
This means the TUC calling a general strike to defend the NHS, kick out the privateers and bring in a workers government and socialism.