NHS stealth sell-off
LABOUR’S PRIORITY: TO LISTEN Tories already moving to give it up for profit
Mustique, where the PM has been enjoying a lavish private getaway, is difficult to get to from the UK.
You have to fly to it in a tiny propeller plane from a neighbouring island because the airfield is so small.
The aircraft can fly only during the day because the runway has no lights.
So it’s perhaps understandable that the PM was unable to rush back to No10 after Donald Trump’s actions put the world at risk.
But there’s a reason Theresa May chose walking in the Welsh mountains and David Cameron took his holidays in Cornwall.
A Prime Minister is Prime Minister all the time, not just when the airport departures are convenient.
The 2015 Iran deal aimed to tame the Middle East state’s nuclear ambitions – and for a while it was working.
But almost as soon as President Trump took office the deal was effectively torn up.
To his credit, Mr Johnson tried to bring the President back to the table at last year’s UN summit. But he failed, leaving the region – as Jeremy Hunt says – playing an “incredibly dangerous game of chicken”.
The Middle East is complicated.
Five years ago the man targeted by Trump’s reckless drone strike was fighting on our side to drive Isis out of Iraq.
Yet the US say he was actively involved in plotting attacks against their allies.
If we are going to avoid another Gulf war – or worse – our leaders need to pay more attention.
THIS Christmas I’ve been proud to support my hard-working colleagues on the front line by doing shifts in my local A&E.
We’re all touched by the NHS at some point in our lives.
For over 70 years it has been our lifeline, the glue holding our society together, often forgotten about, but there in our times of greatest need.
The NHS is there to bring life, to offer care and dignity when we leave the world, and to support our loved ones when tragedy hits.
But front-line workers in the NHS have felt ignored and that the Government does not recognise the day-to-day pressures they face.
Specialists
It didn’t start with claims on the side of a bus during the European referendum campaign in 2016 but, since then, using the NHS for political gain certainly picked up pace.
Throughout the election, Boris Johnson repeatedly denied that the NHS would be up for sale.
Just two weeks after the election, it was revealed that NHS cancer care and children’s treatments are up for grabs in a stealth Tory sell-off.
Cardiology, gynaecology, paediatrics and oncology are among the services being offered to companies.
As an A&E doctor, when someone is rushed into A&E having a heart attack, we work to patch someone up before sending them off to heart specialists.
THE next five years will be incredibly tough for our NHS, communities up and down the country that are already struggling, and individual families who are already reliant on food banks because the system has failed them.
Now that Boris Johnson has
How will it feel knowing that those services are now being provided by a private company? Where is the trust?
Allowing hospital trusts to outsource treatment to private companies could lead to a postcode lottery of health care, further widening the health divide. We need to be bringing the UK together, not tearing it apart, turning communities against each other.
On top of this, discussions are taking his majority, whether it’s selling off the NHS, scrapping protections for workers, or continuing the systematic cuts to school funding, he can do it all.
The Labour Party will have its own leadership contest. We must listen to communities that no longer trust us, we must place with tech giants on how to make money from patient data.
While we must do everything possible to look for cures and ensure a better patient journey, we need to know how our own data is being used.
The last decade has shown us that we must exercise caution with tech giants. The Government does not have the money or expertise needed to create an anonymised patient database, which is exactly why Amazon and Microsoft have been approached.
Trust in our NHS cannot be destroyed demonstrate that we can win and get our country back on track for everyone.
We mustn’t put words in people’s mouths.
By listening to voters across the country, we will be able to form a credible alternative to this damaging Government. because without trust, everything else could be up for grabs.
I was stunned and heartbroken after the election result and bereft at what it would mean for our NHS.
Our hospitals, treatments and dedicated staff cannot simply be sold off to the highest bidder.
These aren’t the principles our NHS was founded and built on and I will continue fighting, standing side by side with our hospital workers, to protect our NHS from those who wish to destroy it.