PITIFUL, PM
May dismisses plea for health service cash & shrugs off problem
Baby heart op is axed FIVE times due to cuts
Killer flu epidemic to put more strain on NHS
May shrugs off crisis with: ‘Nothing’s perfect’
A MUM whose baby’s life-saving heart op was called off five times has blasted the Tories for bringing the NHS to breaking point.
Leanne Smith said Evelyn, one, was put at risk as struggling hospitals fight a killer flu epidemic.
Yet Theresa May yesterday shrugged off the winter health crisis, saying: “Nothing is perfect.”
THERESA May was warned the NHS faces a “life-and-death” crisis as she shrugged off the concerns of desperate patients, saying: “Nothing’s perfect.”
The Prime Minister claimed yesterday that the cancellation of 55,000 patients’ routine surgery this month was “part of the plan” – after apologising for the disaster last week.
She added: “There are some hospitals where very few operations have been cancelled.”
It came as a worried mum lashed the Tory government after her baby daughter’s heart operation was cancelled five times – and a top doctor told of his fears that the flu crisis would pile even more pressure on the creaking health service.
Dismissing calls for a desperately needed cash injection into the NHS, Mrs May told Andrew Marr on BBC1: “You keep talking about the money but what we also need to look at is how the NHS works, how it operates.”
Marr said he would not have survived his stroke in 2013 if he had been left waiting for an ambulance or to see a doctor.
He also raised the case of Leah Butler-Smith, who said she waited an hour for an ambulance then over four hours at Broomfield Hospital in Essex while her mother slipped in and out of consciousness.
Marr warned: “If I’d been waiting for five hours... I wouldn’t be here talking to you. This is about life and death.
“Up and down the country people are having horrendous experiences of the NHS. When you say there is a plan, or not, there is a real, real problem. What would you say to Leah Butler-Smith and her mother?”
Mrs May replied: “I recognise that people have concerns if they have experience of that sort.”
But she added: “Of course nothing’s perfect and there is more for us to do.”
Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth said Mrs May “hasn’t got a plan to get those people off the trolleys and corridors”.
He added: “Yet again Theresa May has shown an utter disregard for patients languishing on trolleys, delayed in ambulances in the freezing cold weather or forced to wait longer in pain and anxiety because their operation has been cancelled. A real apology would be backed up by real action.” One-time Labour leadership hopeful Chuka Umunna accused Mrs May of having “her head in the sand” and being “in complete denial about an NHS crisis of the Tories’ making”. He tweeted: “They simply refuse to acknowledge any responsibility at all for what is happening. “Utterly shameful.” Franz Ferdinand drummer Paul Thomson, performing at the end of the show, appeared to show support for the NHS by wearing a T-shirt bearing its logo above the Nike tick.
British Medical Association Council chairman Dr Chaand Nagpaul said: “The Prime Minister appears to be in denial about the scale of the pressure facing the NHS.”
He added it was “astonishing” Mrs May claims the NHS was prepared for winter and said an “honest debate” is needed about the investment needed.
Meanwhile, Margaret Thatcher’s favourite think-tank today calls for a Royal Commission on the NHS. Robert Colvile, director of the Centre for Policy Studies, says: “As it turns 70, the NHS is suffering from multiple chronic conditions.
“A Royal Commission can provide the kind of full-scale diagnosis needed to restore it to health, rather than having the health service limp on.”