Jacky Mckenna for our health Dan Harper
to “stealth privatisation” and demanded a living wage for Britain’s care workers. The PCS trade union’s drumming band gave the event a carnival feel while activists chanted “NHS – not for sale”.
The march ended at a stage on Whitehall opposite Downing Street where crowds heard from politicians, celebrities and frontline NHS staff.
Mr Corbyn was given a rapturous reception as he blasted privatisation in the service.
He said: “There is a principle involved. Paying money out to private healthcare firms, the profits of which sometimes end up in tax havens around the world. “Think it through, you and I pay our taxes because we want a health service for everyone. “I don’t pay my taxes for someone to rip off the public and squirrel the profits away to avoid the tax. I want the NHS to be funded and operated by the public, for the public and in public hands.” The march came after a decade-long funding squeeze with annual increases of around 1 per cent – well below the 4 per cent a year needed. Experts say Theresa May’s recent promised increase of around 3 per cent is not enough to undo a collapse of standards.
Helen Erasmus, who has worked as a midwife for 30 years, told the Sunday People that morale among NHS workers had reached an alltime low.
She said: “Everybody feels like they are at breaking point. We feel like we aren’t able to do the best for our patients because of staff shortages.
“Everybody is feeling the strain of cuts. Every day you are putting in extra hours. Nobody ever clocks off on time.
“You often don’t get breaks and when you do you can’t leave the area in case you’re needed, so you can’t even go to the canteen.”
But the 55-year-old, from Newport, Gwent, added: “I’d go to jail to save the NHS. I care about it that much.”
Former Coronation Street actress Sally Lindsay, who played Shelley Unwin, took to the stage with her two children wearing “Born in the NHS” T-shirts. She said: “This is our NHS – let’s fight to save it.” Actor Ralf Little, from the Royle Family, told the crowds: “I’m here because the NHS saved my life when I was a kid. “Time and again we have to assemble, like we have today, to remind the Government there is neither the political mandate nor popular appeal to underfund it, to privatise it, or to war with the people who run it.” TUC general secretary Frances O’grady said:“the only reason the NHS has kept going is because of our wonderful staff. Not just the doctors and the nurses, but the porters, cleaners, caterers.” The march came on the day it was announced hundreds of thousands of NHS patients will be told they can’t have routine surgery. Procedures from varicose vein surgery to tonsil removal were deemed outdated or risky by NHS England. JACKY, 55, owes her life to the NHS after she developed sepsis last year when one of her kidneys got blocked. She had to be resuscitated and spent three months in a coma at Wycombe Hospital.
Jacky of Aylesbury, Bucks, said: “I feel so lucky to be here. When things like that happen you realise there is nothing without your health.” DAN, 45, marched with a banner saying ‘Thank you for saving my mum’s life’.
His mother Yvonne has the lung condition COPD and had to be resuscitated by paramedics three years ago when she stopped breathing at home.
She later underwent heart surgery at Colchester Hospital in Essex – where she had worked as an NHS administrator.
Dan, of North London, said: “The paramedics knew they had to get her to hospital as soon as possible and they went off road to get her there quicker.”