Why campaigners aren’t helping NHS
AS a retired hospital consultant, I have read with interest the increasing number of letters to these pages from “campaigners” opposed to NHS plans to improve hospital services.
Many of these appear to be letters written by the same few people. Following a cursory review of the group’s website and social media accounts, one could be forgiven for believing these are in the main individuals with a particular political axe to grind.
Everyone is, of course, entitled to their beliefs, but this should not be a political issue. Indeed, I have long held the view that politics has no place in the administration of the NHS.
Rather than seeking answers or reassurance to legitimate concerns, the campaigners seem intent only on a strategy, which is to oppose and block.
This is reckless in the extreme. Rather than saving the NHS, what they are actually campaigning for is to maintain the status quo; buildings and services which are woefully inadequate and mean that patients are frequently denied the care they deserve.
Modern medicine is an incredible thing. Treatments provided now were unthinkable a few years ago. But wonderful staff are time and time again let down by buildings and facilities that have not kept pace and hinder their ability to do the job they would wish.
It is easy to argue that we want more hospitals at the end of our road. But the reality, quite apart from how they might be staffed, is that it would not be affordable.
That’s an issue for the UK government, not the local NHS. In the meantime opposing these plans runs the risk of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
Whatever the underlying motive, the government has committed several billion pounds of investment for hospitals in England. One might suspect that there is political capital to be gained and, if so, the risk must be that if we do not seize this opportunity now the funding will be reallocated to any number of other willing takers the length and breadth of the country.
Then where would we be? The answer is facing the prospect of many more decades trying to mend and make do.
That is not saving the NHS. It is tying one hand behind its back and kicking it in the shins whilst it is down.
Matthew Compton, Leicester