New public sector housing body needed
THERE can be little dispute that the NHS went into this pandemic poorly equipped. If you are a Tory supporter, you might prefer to spin that as “heroically under-prepared”.
Healthcare spending grew far faster between 1997 (when New Labour started) and 2009 (the ‘crash’) at an average increase of 4.7% per year, than the 1.2% per year increase between 2009 and 2018.
The period from 2010 to 2018 was the time of first austerity under the Tory-LibDem coalition, then Tory governments. Arguably, the country also got distracted by Brexit lies and misinformation, leading us to leave the EU supported by just 37.5% of the electorate. (Never mind – repeated polls have shown that a lot of Leave voters now regret it, and there have been clear majorities in favour of the EU since 2016 in polls, so we can look forward to rejoining the single market in a decade, to repair the Brexit and pandemic damage). We have a shortage of about 40,000 nurses. Brexit is harming recruitment, there’s no doubt about that. This has all affected our Covid response. We should restore the nursing bursaries which the Tories shamefully and illogically cut, in order to encourage more young people into nursing. And we should pay doctors, nurses and frontline healthcare workers a decent wage, and build and reserve housing for them and other key workers. We have a national housing shortage of around two million homes – yes, you read that right, two million homes need to be built – and the State should therefore fund the building of some of these as capital expenditure for the long-term.
A new public sector housing body could be established to work in partnership with local authorities, housing associations and community land trusts to manage the new homes to be built. Don’t say it cannot be done – where there’s a will, there’s always a way.
This is all part of building back fairer. Don’t be fooled by Conservative lies and falsehoods on this. We accepted massive debt to pay for World War Two and we must accept long-term debt costs now to build a better country.
Simon Wood
Bristol