You’d be forgiven for thinking Thérèse Coffey, the fourth Tory Health and Social Care Secretary in just over a year, had not been a stalwart of the Conservative front bench for over a decade when she delivered her “Plan for Patients” last week.
Ms Coffey did a good job of listing the vast problems in the NHS after 12 years of Conservative rule and set out her aims at fixing GP waiting times, increasing staffing levels, easing pressure on GP surgeries and reducing record ambulance waiting times.
She said far less about why the NHS was in such a state, exactly how she would fix it and how much it would cost to do so.
The announcement was based on the new Health Secretary’s gimmicky NHS priorities of “ABC and D – Ambulances, Backlog, Care, Doctors and Dentists.”
Perhaps mental health didn’t feature in her plans at all because it comes too far down the alphabet. There was also no reference to nurses – the largest section of the workforce – pay or indeed finances, which are crucially lacking in an underfunded NHS.
The centrepiece of the proposals was a pledge that every person who needs an appointment with a GP will be expected to be able to get one within two weeks, while patients with the “most urgent needs” should be seen on the same day.
To underscore how unambitious this aspiration is, while Labour was in Government, we guaranteed a GP appointment within 48 hours.
It’s a sticking plaster response to the biggest crisis our NHS has ever faced. Because it completely ignores the gaping workforce shortage, the GP retirement timebomb and the legions of NHS staff leaving the profession. Without a workforce plan there simply isn’t a plan for the NHS.
It is reported that the Government has shelved their promised workforce plan amid government “uncertainty” and a row with the Treasury over funding.
While I’m pleased to see movement on NHS pension rules, the plan to just hope doctors and nurses will come out of retirement and an army of volunteers will arrive to fix the problem is a fantasy.
Where are the 6,000 new GPs that were promised in the Tory manifesto by 2024? Where is the investment in training?
To respond to a serious workforce shortage in Primary Care – with current staff working harder than ever in increasingly challenging circumstances – with mere sound and fury about waiting times is as helpful to patients and NHS workers as scrapping the Oxford comma, which was the incoming Health Secretary’s main advice, in a memo to staff at the Department of Health and Social Care.
Rather than just cutting taxes and boosting banker’s bonuses, the government needs to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.
Care workers, paramedics, hospital porters, nurses and other key workers so vital to improving patients’ care can’t live on their current wages and are getting less stressful jobs elsewhere.
The Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting described the Tory pledge to address GP wait times as “like the arsonists promising to put out the fire”.
There are ways to turn the NHS around – Labour has done it before and will do so again, but if this is the “centrepiece” policy to address the NHS crisis caused by 12 years of Tory neglect, then we need a new government now.
This is a monthly guest column provided by
Mohammad Yasin, Labour MP for Bedford & Kempston.
It is published unedited and does not reflect
the views of the Bedford Independent.
