Our NHS needs more than a sticking plaster — it needs protection against profiteering policies

AFTER years of punitive, ideologically driven austerity measures that have disastrously failed the UK, the Tory Government tells us that “the age of austerity is coming to an end”.

Additional funding for health and social care in the recent Conservative Budget is welcome. However, to quote Professor John Appleby, chief economist of the Nuffield Trust: “After a financial squeeze of many years, much of this new money will be needed just to get the basics back on track.” Meanwhile, the extra funding for social care services is only enough to prevent a total collapse of the system. In Northern Ireland, citizens increasingly feel voiceless on these issues, unless they share the ideological stance of the DUP, which keeps Theresa May’s Government afloat.

In response, Save Our Services NI (SOSNI), which originated in Fermanagh and south Tyrone, has launched a Belfast branch as part of a province-wide roll-out.

The campaign will seek to mobilise public opposition to any further erosion of public services that hurt all but the best-off in our society.

SOSNI has begun by publicising all that is good about the NHS and the legacy of its founder, Nye Bevan. It is also offering resistance to policies that insidiously introduce profiteering privatisation measures by the back door and it is campaigning for an NHS Reinstatement Bill, which should also apply to Northern Ireland.

The main parties at Stormont have relinquished their duties on these vital matters; ordinary people must not. Too much is at stake.

ANDREWWARD Belfast Labour Party