Stephanie Peacock MP: Labour is ready

WE all rely on our NHS over the course of our lifetime – our brilliant health service workers work tirelessly to keep us well.

We are proud of this great

British institution, and rightly so.

However, without proper government support, they can only do so much.

Our NHS is struggling, with staffing issues, appointment backlogs and under-investment tipping them into breaking point.

Across the country, the effects of this were felt over the summer, but as the inevitable increase in sickness approaches over the winter months, the state of our NHS becomes even more alarming.

The national NHS vacancy rate sits at 9.7 per cent. This means one in 17 vacancies are going unfilled for doctors, and one in ten are unfilled for nurses.

The government blame the healthcare crisis on the pandemic, but this is not accurate.

The NHS entered the pandemic with 100,000 staff shortages and 112,000 social care vacancies.

Of course, this means that existing staff are bearing the brunt of an unmanageable workload. They are overworked and are becoming sick themselves. In fact, the NHS sickness absence rate in South Yorkshire is at 7.1 per cent.

I know that people in Barnsley are finding it very difficult to get a GP appointment, register with an NHS dentist, and face long waits for debilitating conditions that are severely impacting their lives. I raised the case of one constituent in Barnsley East, who will have been waiting almost two years for a neurology appointment by the time they are finally seen in January 2023.

They have been in excruciating pain for months, have lost their job as they are unable to work, and are now having to choose between heating and eating. This is a heart-breaking case, but it is one we hear all too often.

Equally, NHS staff cannot give anymore than they do to help as many patients as possible.

GPs are frequently taking three times the safe number of appointments, sometimes taking 200 per day. This is leaving doctors overstretched and therefore early warning signs for conditions such as dementia are missed.

I have repeatedly called on the government to take action on the state of our healthcare services, asking them to improve waiting times, improve access to NHS dentistry, and advocating for equity for the North.

Twelve years of consecutive Conservative governments have run our health services to the ground, with nursing staff facing a real terms cut of 20 per cent since 2010.

Labour have a ten-year plan for the modernisation and transformation of the NHS. We would alleviate the staffing crisis by doubling the number of medical school places, training 15,000 new doctors a year and 10,000 additional nurses and midwives each year.

We would pay for this by abolishing the Tories’ non-dom tax status policy, putting money where the British people need it most. Working people and NHS staff deserve better than this.

They deserve to have the NHS we know and love to be restored.

They deserve the comfort of knowing that our health service can and will be there for them when they need it. They deserve much better than this Conservative government.

Our NHS needs a Labour government. We are ready to fix this mess.