MAKE IT BETTER

£26bn for service left crippled by harsh cuts

MEDICAL experts and health unions welcomed Labour’s bold pledge to rescue the NHS from the despair caused by nine years of Tory cuts.

Jeremy Corbyn is to promise £26billion a year to revive the vital service which has been brought to its knees by austerity.

Under a radical 10-point plan, the party will vow to build new hospitals and GP surgeries, reduce increasingly long waiting lists, boost underfunded mental health services and improve cancer survival rates.

Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth today unveils the package at the Royal Society of Medicine. He will say: “Our NHS is crying out for a financial rescue plan.

“We are announcing today the levels of investment it needs to not only provide the quality care our sick and elderly deserve but secures the NHS for the future. Only Labour has a plan to rescue our NHS.”

PROMISING

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis added: “This rescue plan can’t come soon enough. It takes the NHS back to the time before heartless Tory cuts.” British Medical Association chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul hailed the pledge as “promising”.

The 10-point plan includes £15billion for new hospitals and repairs and £1.5billion on extra CT and MRI scanners.

The cash injection is £6billion more in real terms every year than the funding announced by the Tories a year ago. It would be paid for by reversing corporation tax cuts and taxing the richest more.

Vows to scrap prescription fees and hospital parking charges are not included in the £26billion but will be separately costed in Labour’s manifesto.

LABOUR’S ambitious plan to revive the NHS after nearly a decade of Tory abuse is a potentially life-saving boost for our most precious public service.

The £26billion emergency package proposed by Jeremy Corbyn beats anything the Conservatives are capable of dangling to divert attention from the huge damage they have inflicted.

Waiting times have increased and queues have lengthened under the Tories because of the worst financial squeeze in NHS history.

The Conservatives are responsible for the intolerable strains on the health service, not to mention the creeping privatisation and ever-more bureaucratic mayhem.

It’s no wonder so many of our overworked nurses and doctors are demoralised.

Everything is to play for in this election, and Boris Johnson doesn’t look as smug as he did a fortnight ago. Vital issues such as the NHS mean this contest is about more than Brexit. The NHS is Corbyn’s trump card.

The health service is in Labour’s DNA. So, if you value the NHS, vote Labour.