The NHS crisis is ‘completely unacceptable’
Says the man responsible
JEREMY Hunt has finally admitted the NHS crisis is “completely unacceptable” – but refused to accept any blame for it.
The Health Secretary broke his silence hours after the Mirror exposed how the health service is being starved of cash under his leadership.
He said there was “no excuse” for problems faced by millions of patients over the winter. And he told the BBC: “That kind of care is completely unacceptable. No one would want it for members of their own family.”
But he insisted the problems were not unique to the UK.
And when asked if there would be more money for the NHS in the Budget, he said: “This is an area where there is pressure and if we’re going to have a solution, it needs to be a long-term and sustainable solution, not a quick fix.”
Waits for casualty care, beds, cancer treatment, GP appointments and routine operations are the longest ever suffered by patients across the country. The number of operations cancelled by the NHS in England hit a 15-year high last year, figures revealed yesterday.
Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth said: “On his watch the NHS is suffering from the biggest financial squeeze in history and social care is at tipping point. Jeremy Hunt appears to be finally waking up to the scale of the crisis but he must now accept respon- sibility. Instead he offers just hand wringing but no solutions.”
We told yesterday how Government health spending is growing at the slowest rate since records began in 1955. And we highlighted how the UK spends less than other EU countries on health – 9.9% of GDP compared with the European average of 10.3%.
NOW that we have shamed Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt into finally admitting the NHS is in crisis, it’s time to see the colour of Theresa May’s money.
The hapless Hunt’s belated acceptance that growing problems are “completely unacceptable” is progress after the Prime Minister pretended last month there were only a “small number of incidents of unacceptable practice”.
But only an emergency injection of funds will revive a health service which is having the life squeezed out of it by a spending straitjacket.
With the worst A&E performance since modern records were first collected, this is a colossal failure by the Tory Government.
Of course institutional flaws need fixing, with care and medical treatment linked so the vulnerable and elderly aren’t stuck in hospital when they’re desperate to be in their own homes.
But pathetic spending is at the root of so many problems, no matter how many scapegoats the Tories blame.
We know doctors and nurses aren’t causing this crisis. The same cannot be said of the Prime Minister and Health Secretary.