Will NHS managers back pay campaign?
WE all want better hospitals and improved healthcare services, but to make this a reality we need to prevent politicians from attacking the pay and conditions of health workers.
Drastic improvements in the working environment in the NHS, with fair pay and conditions as a bare minimum, will ensure that there are plenty of staff – a prerequisite for improved patient care and better health outcomes for all.
One thing that will not improve conditions in our hospitals, for workers or patients, is an increased reliance on the private sector, where private wealth is the top priority, instead of public health.
Although well-represented on the Mercury letters page, a minority of the public will have heard about the ongoing consultation on the proposed reorganisation of hospitals in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.
Save Our NHS Leicestershire members, who previously spearheaded the successful effort to save Glenfield children’s heart unit, have raised serious concerns about the current plans. Inadequate bed provision is one major worry.
The official NHS document explains: “The proposal being discussed through this consultation is a key part our local Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP).”
For those who don’t know this is the same STP that one major health trade union nicknamed Slash, Trash and Privatise.
These cloaked privatisation plans have been opposed by health campaigners for years and it is as a direct result of successful local grassroots campaigns that the local NHS managers were forced to revise their initial 2017 STP plan to reduce the total number of acute hospitals beds by 243!
Today, NHS bosses propose to increase the number of hospital beds by 139. Not only is this not enough, but these beds are not actually costed in the plans.
There is a serious risk that if NHS bosses continue to plan for not enough need, then private sector involvement in our health services will only deepen.
I want better hospitals now and for all future generations. But the current plans for our health services will only short-change our children. If the pandemic has taught us anything about public health, it is that we need more not less.
We need a promise of increased investment in staff, and the removal of all corporate scroungers from our health infrastructure. More money for wages is a must (a 15 per cent pay rise would be a start), more capacity and more beds.
Nice new buildings are nowhere near enough to make our hospitals “fit for the future”.
Local NHS bosses claim to be on the side of NHS workers. Will they then commit to campaigning for a decent pay rise for their staff?
Franklin O’Riordan, Leicester