Charging NHS heroes to park shames our nation

THE REINTRODUCTION of parking charges at hospitals across England when the country is in the throes of fighting a pandemic is an outrageous move that will disgust taxpayers.

Staff at Surrey’s Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust fear they will be more than £500 a year worse off.

This is an appalling way to treat health professionals, many of whom have witnessed horrors on the Covid frontline.

These men and women who have worked around the clock deserve our thanks and respect, but a de facto tax on going to work to save lives will hit their morale at a time when they are fighting exhaustion.

Common sense and common decency demand the charges are axed.

It is intolerable to squeeze cash out of staff and patients.A raft of measures were announced last year to ensure key groups would be spared charges, but many English trusts are once again trying to rake in cash.

Everything should be done to eliminate unnecessary stress from the lives of those in the NHS, from consultants to porters, as Britain’s health crisis continues. It shames our nation that true heroes feel they have been kicked in the teeth by bureaucrats.

SORRY, but I am not applauding the law which will enable Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, to take six months maternity leave.

Government cannot just absent itself. Supposing Winston Churchill had been a pregnant woman?

It is one thing for MPs, very junior ministers and Shadow Cabinet members to take extended time off but quite another for senior members of the Government to do so. You might as well have generals going on maternity leave in the middle of a battle.