Tax the NHS back to life

When someone runs an organisation into the ground, the boss usually gets sacked. But the Tories keep them in the job.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt genuinely believes the NHS is better and safer. Tell that to the 45,000 patients waiting more than four hours on trolleys.

Or the four million on waiting lists, the nurses at foodbanks and the chiefs who say staffing levels are so unsafe patients will die.

Even Theresa May accepts that mental health care and social care are in crisis. But she can’t accept that it’s down to massive Tory underinvestment.

The Conservatives spent £3billion on a top-down reorganisation of the NHS to make it easier for private sector suppliers to get contracts. They

Gordon

Brown tells in his new book how he thought he struck a deal with Tony Blair for him to stand down as PM in the middle of his second term. I used to be their marriage counsellor. In one meeting I gave Tony a smaller chair. He said: “Don’t worry, I’m used to Gordon looking down on

me!”

said it was for efficiency. It was pure ideology.

When Nye Bevan launched Labour’s NHS in 1947 he promised a healthcare system “based upon need and not the ability to pay”. Hunt has changed that to treatment “free at the point of use”... if you’re prepared to wait up to 44 months for it.

This week the Department of Health admitted that we have a shortage of 50,000 doctors and nurses. The growth of the private health service has led to a massive increase in firms’ profits from desperate patients.

Or they queue jump by paying for a private consultation and a fast-track to NHS treatment.

And with NHS chief executive Simon Stevens saying we need an extra £4billion to avoid having a million more people on waiting lists, the only way to solve it is to raise more tax. An extra penny on National Insurance would be a price worth paying to help get our NHS off life support.