CONTENTS

politics first | Corridors
September / October 2016 | www.politicsfirst.org.uk
Labour will put the “N” back
into the NHS
The Liberal Democrats have always
had the community at their roots
Diane Abbott, Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Labour MP
for Hackney North and Stoke Newington
With every passing month, the NHS hits new record
lows. New figures show ambulance response targets
have been missed for 13 months in a row, while A&E
waiting times have been missed for 11 months in a
row. Further to that, junior doctors are striking, lifesaving
drugs are being rationed, and dozens of Trusts
and Clinical Commissioning Groups are closing down or
being placed in special measures.
Baroness Kath Pinnock, a Liberal Democrat Peer
Liberal Democrats are optimistic, by nature. We want
to help make the world, or at least our bit of it, a better
place. The strapline of many a Liberal Democrat leaflet
is: “Making a Difference” or “Getting Things Done”.
The British health system is failing at
almost every level and the reasons are
primarily down to money.
Since 2010, the Tories have increased
the NHS budget by under 1 per cent in
real terms each year, while demand has
grown 3.5-4 per cent each year because
our population is aging – by 2020, the
number of over 85s will have doubled.
Caring for those often complex cases is
not cheap.
Worse still, the government has cut
local authorities’ social care budgets
by a third (£4.6 billion) since 2011 so
abandoned patients end up in our already
stretched A&Es, whose staff have been
forced to become carers and social
workers to pick up the slack.
That pressure also has an emotional
cost. Morale is at rock bottom. A report
into North Middlesex hospital found that
doctors regularly wept at the end of their
shifts due to the added toil of their work.
But there is nothing accidental about
the crisis. It has been engineered by the
government to create shocks to the public
health system, which the government
‘resolves’ by privatising the provision of
care. It is what Naomi Klein refers to as
the “shock doctrine”: the crisis is used to
implement neoliberal economic policies
such as privatization, deregulation and
cuts to social services.
Hence we have seen the Health and Social
Care Act (2012) allowing Trusts to tender
out half of their work to the private sector;
we have seen the replacement of nurses
bursaries with loans; and we have seen cuts,
cuts, cuts everywhere, from public health to
social care to district nursing.
In a recent paper on the introduction
of private sector provision in elective hip
surgeries in Scotland – the first study
of its kind – researchers at Queen Mary
University discovered that privatisation
“was associated with a decrease in public
provision and may have contributed to
an increase in age and socio-economic
inequalities in treatment rates.”
That is because private providers cherry
pick the cheap and easy patients and leave
the more challenging and expensive patients,
who are more likely to be old and lowincome,
to compete for the shrinking public
part of the NHS.
The private providers are also often not a
fan of paying tax, which deprives the public
purse of money to pay for more doctors and
more nurses. Take, for example, the General
Healthcare Group, which owns 70 hospitals
nationwide and is the biggest provider of
acute care in the NHS. GHG has established
complex international corporate structures to
shift profits it makes on its hospitals – which
care for thousands of state-funded patients
each year - to cut its bottom line and avoid tax
(it has not paid any tax in the UK for five years).
That is common among the large private
health providers to the NHS. Spire Healthcare,
BPL, Circle Health, Care UK, Ramsay Health
and Virgin similarly use tax havens to avoid
paying UK tax.
We need to face up to those problems
with radical action.
Labour will renationalise the NHS with a
new National Health Service Bill to roll back
20 years of privatisation and marketisation
started by the Tories and wrongly continued
under New Labour.
The bill will designate the NHS as a
non-economic service of general interest
and exclude it from European Union treaties
and the World Trade Organisation General
Agreement on Trade in Services, so it can be
on a non-commercial basis and purely in the
public interest, not for profit.
That will save money, improve care and
shift control for the nation’s health away from
corporations and towards elected officials.
We should care for our own sick. Leaving
it to the private sector, in effect, prioritises
the shareholder’s corporations over taxpayers
and patients.
Labour will stop the madness by putting
the “N” back into the NHS.
We aspire to making a practical and positive
difference to the lives of the people in our
communities. It is the importance we place on
communities that sets us apart.
Communities built around a shared interest
or an attachment to a place, large or small, all
matter to Liberal Democrats because vibrant
communities have people who, respecting
differences, work together to create a better
quality of life.
So what does that mean in practice?
For Liberal Democrats seeking, and then
listening and respecting, the disparate views in
our communities is vital. It enables everyone to
have their say. Carried out effectively, it allows
the “quiet” voices and the “hard to reach” to be
heard. It gives a conduit for everyone, whatever
their background, to feel part of the community
and thus to help shape it.
On top of that, we have a fundamental
conviction that no-one shall be enslaved by
poverty, ignorance or conformity, and this sits
at the top of our constitution and runs through
much of what we do.
With those values comes determination
to help right the ills in our communities, the
issues that affect the vast majority of people
in this country. Lack of affordable and good
quality housing; a good school that helps their
child reach their potential; affordable child care
(including during school holidays); being able
to pay the bills; an NHS that is not constantly at
breaking point; and decent care for older people.
Over-crowded and poor quality housing
depresses opportunity and increases the
likelihood of ill health and low income for
families. Liberal Democrats have, therefore,
prioritised housing, fighting to ensure there is
sufficient housing of the right quality and at a
price that people can afford. It is not just about
building more houses, though this is important,
but making sure that what is built meets needs.
That has to include homes provided by Housing
Associations or Local Authorities for rent
which, sadly, has been an anathema to recent
Governments.
We have always talked as a party about
education as a great provider of opportunity
in society and we must start providing early
help where needed for pre-school children.
Liberal Democrats made a start with providing
free child care for the two year olds from the
most impoverished families. More needs to
be achieved through early intervention by
professionals from across disciplines, working
closely together so no child is disadvantaged
from the outset of their school career.
Parents want a good school for their
children. The response from Government has
been an obsession with school structures and
governance. Those changes have done little to
advance the raising of skills and narrowing of
the gap. And that is why the Liberal Democrats’
Pupil Premium, providing more money to more
disadvantaged schools, is so vital. The regular
tinkering with, and narrowing of, the curriculum,
combined with an over emphasis on testing,
does not enable all children to prosper in
school. What does work is ambitious leadership
and inspirational teaching. Liberal Democrats
will put their effort and attention into developing
both of those.
Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords won
a commitment in the recent Child Care Act for
flexible child care as part of the further free 20
hours per week for three and four year olds. If
the Government stands by that commitment,
it will include the ability to take up some of
those hours during school holidays. That is real
practical help for parents.
For young and old, alike, the value of the NHS
cannot be underestimated. Adequately funding
the NHS by raising the proportion of GDP spent,
to bring it closer to that of other developed
countries, will be a start. Liberal Democrats will
continue to make the case for parity of provision
for mental illness.
So much of that ties into where the decisions
are made. The recent referendum demonstrated
how remote many communities feel from the
decision-making that impacts on their lives. The
Liberal Democrat answer is to return genuine
powers and responsibilities to a reformed local
government, enabling individuals and their
communities to shape the place where they live,
in a way which suits their needs and aspirations.
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