Labour made a firm commitment to a free and locally accountable NHS, and slammed the Conservatives’ push for privatisation within the health service at todays (October 23) full council meeting.
Councillor Morgan, Leader of the Labour and Co-operative group said:
“Ten days ago the Tories admitted to the Times newspaper that ‘NHS reforms have been our worst mistake’. And we can see the results.
“No top-down reorganisation of the NHS? Since 2010 there have been 440 reorganisations. Senior NHS managers’ pay has risen by almost three times as much as nurses’ salaries since the general election. 44% of NHS workers are now working up to 5 hours unpaid overtime a week, saving the NHS £1.5bn a year. Yet Jeremy Hunt responds by freezing their wages.
“In a recent snapshot, 5,600 A&E patients were waiting up to 12 hours for beds, double the numbers seen in previous years. Locally our A&E in the city is constantly in Code Black, while collectively Surrey & Sussex NHS Trusts are £16.4 million in the red.
“Andy Burnham has committed Labour to ‘removing the market from the NHS’ to create an ever-greater NHS, one that will eventually include universal, free provision of care to the elderly.
“Labour will guarantee no-one will have to wait longer than one week for cancer tests and results by 2020. A Labour government will deliver £2.5bn in additional funding per year, 20,000 more nursing posts, 5,000 more care workers, 3,000 more midwives and 8,000 more GPs.
“Labour’s commitment to a free-at-the-point of use health service is absolute. Only Labour can deliver all this, because only Labour, not the Greens, are an alternative to the current Tory led government.“