Tag Archives: NHS

Mark Valladares

12 September 2023 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Tue 12th September 2023 - 10:30 pm
  • Wage Figures: Sunak must commit to triple lock now
  • NHS staff cannot be left to suffer in silence
  • Government may have broken law over sewage: “Environmental vandalism on an industrial scale”
  • Liberal Democrats welcome TfL’s new road safety charter

Wage Figures: Sunak must commit to triple lock now

Responding to today’s wage figures which would be used to uprate pensions, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson Sarah Olney MP said:

Rishi Sunak must commit now to the triple lock to ensure the state pension rises in line with the cost of living.

His failure to commit to the triple lock earlier this week will have left a cloud of uncertainty hanging over struggling pensioners. We also need a guarantee that welfare payments won’t be slashed in real terms.

Families and pensioners should not be made to pay the price for years of economic mismanagement under the Conservatives.

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Catherine Royce

The NHS, doctors and government – it’s ideological, stupid

By Catherine Royce | Fri 11th August 2023 - 11:31 am

So here we are in the 8th month of the doctors’ dispute with the Conservative government for pay restoration of 35% to repair salary losses over the past decade plus.

We are not talking about a pay increase just restoration, not unreasonable. How did this happen? – well, in short, because doctors are excluded from any of the pay awards made to other NHS staff because doctors pay is the remit of a so-called independent pay review body which takes care of doctors (and dentists) pay, except it doesn’t, and when it finally made a recommendation, the government deemed it unaffordable, so ditched it.

To put this in context, the judiciary were given 15% in 2018 without so much as a shot fired in anger; the doctors got 1% that year. The justification for such a high settlement for judges and barristers? – recruitment and retention.

That rings a bell, oh yes, there’s a crisis of recruitment and retention in the NHS medical workforce too.

Could the fact that many MPs have a legal background and vanishingly few a medical one be a factor? – a case of us and them?

During the pandemic which followed soon after, I don’t remember the judiciary stepping up to the plate, in fact the courts more or less closed down, at least for the first year, and are now getting back up to speed.

No judges or barristers were called upon to help turn patients who were on ventilators in ITU every 2 hours, wearing inadequate protection, up close and personal face to face, day after day, week after week, month after month.  Doctors were going in to work every day, as was the whole health and care workforce, throughout that national nightmare, not working from the comfort of their homes on Zoom and in their pyjamas, too many paid the ultimate price in that first year.

Prime Minister Sunak recently stated, before he went off on holiday, that  ‘a generous offer of 6% is final and no further talks will take place’ – hmmm, that doesn’t quite do it, does it?

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Mark Valladares

Hospitals suffer chemical leaks and broken fire alarms as repair bills rise

By Mark Valladares | Wed 9th August 2023 - 9:28 pm
  • More than 100 chemical leaks in hospitals last year, including in children’s wards, A&Es and delivery units.
  • Other hospitals suffering from broken fire alarms despite 1,159 fires recorded last year
  • Liberal Democrats demand urgent plan to fix England’s hospitals as repair bill tops £10bn

A Freedom of Information investigation by the Liberal Democrats has found that England’s hospitals are crumbling, with chemicals leaking in patient areas and others with multiple broken fire alarms.

The frightening new revelations follow record repair costs, as the cost of eradicating the repair backlog at NHS hospitals and equipment hit £10bn for the first time last year. Last …

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Mark Valladares

5 July 2023 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Wed 5th July 2023 - 10:30 pm
  • Ed Davey warns social care “avalanche” threatens to bury NHS as figures reveal hospitals hardest hit by delayed discharges
  • Ofwat chief exec admits water bills will go up: Time for a proper regulator with teeth
  • Sunak has “thrown in the towel” one year on after resigning from Johnson government

Ed Davey warns social care “avalanche” threatens to bury NHS as figures reveal hospitals hardest hit by delayed discharges

  • Ed Davey gives speech to LGA Conference warning of impending catastrophe for NHS unless government fixes social care crisis
  • New analysis reveals hospitals lost 128,000 bed days in May to delayed discharges, up 40% compared to last year
  • NHS trusts hardest hit by delayed discharges include Liverpool, Leeds, East Sussex and Surrey
  • Lib Dem Leader calls for a Carer’s Minimum Wage to fix social care staffing crisis

Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey will tomorrow warn that a social care “avalanche” is “threatening to bury the NHS”, in a speech to the Local Government Association’s annual conference.

It comes as new research has revealed the hospitals hardest hit by delayed discharges, with thousands of bed days being lost because medically fit patients are stuck in hospital waiting for care.

The House of Commons Library analysis commissioned by the Liberal Democrats reveals the NHS lost over 128,800 bed days to delayed discharges from hospital in May, up 32% on the same period last year. The vast majority (82%) of bed days lost involved patients who been stuck in hospital for three weeks or more.

The NHS trusts with the highest number of bed days lost to delayed discharges were Liverpool University Hospitals (8,146), East Sussex (4,505), Leeds Teaching Hospitals (4,370), University Hospitals Sussex (4,450) and Frimley in Surrey (3,748).

Delayed discharges take place when medically fit patients are unable to leave hospital, often due to a lack of social care.

The Liberal Democrats are calling for the introduction of a Carer’s Minimum Wage, £2 above the minimum wage, to tackle huge shortages in the social care sector. This would help address the staggering 165,000 vacancies in social care, which are leaving far too many patients stranded in hospitals waiting for the care they need.

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Mary Reid

Liberal Democrats celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the NHS

By Mary Reid | Wed 5th July 2023 - 10:29 am

Today is the 75th birthday of our much beloved, but beleaguered, NHS.

Ed Davey said:

With parents who passed away when I was young, looking after my Gran, now caring for my disabled son, throughout my life the NHS has been there. Often through really tough times and the more joyful birth of my children.

I am fiercely proud that it remains one of the most iconic services we have in the UK free to everyone.

The best birthday gift of all would be to put the NHS back on a stable footing, by increasing the number of available GP appointments, ending the long waits for ambulances, and closing the growing divide between those that can access dental care and those who can’t.

Daisy Cooper is our spokesperson for Health, Wellbeing and Social Care and she has written a longer post here. In it she says:

High-quality healthcare, free at the point of use, is essential for individual freedom and good health gives people the freedom to live the lives they choose. And that’s why as Liberals we have always championed the NHS.

We were there at its founding, and helped forge this national institution on the proposals set out in the Beveridge report in 1942.

And we’re here now still fighting for those values across the country.

The next election will give us a real chance to show the country what the Conservative’s dereliction of duty means for their health, and what our plans are to do something about it.

The Liberal Democrats are proud to be champions of the NHS and we will always fight to ensure that the care everyone receives is based on their need, not their ability to pay.

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Mary Reid

The hell that is A&E

By Mary Reid | Thu 22nd June 2023 - 11:21 am

At the weekend I spent far too long in an A&E department. Now my story is nothing special and it could be repeated by thousands of people around the country. The worrying thing is precisely that – my experience is now normal, rather than exceptional.

It was my husband Ian who needed medical care, complicated by the fact that he is 79, has some disability and uses a wheelchair outside our home. We didn’t think we needed to go to A&E but phoned 111 on Sunday afternoon for some advice. They sent us to the out-of-hours GP unit at a renowned teaching hospital some 40 minutes drive away. The GP there thought he needed to be seen by hospital staff, and possibly admitted, so sent him down the corridor to A&E.

We probably arrived at a bad time. Not only was it the weekend but junior doctors had been on strike earlier in the week so no doubt some people had held off until the Sunday evening. First we joined the queue to see the triage nurse, alongside a police officer with a prisoner. The small waiting room was already packed with around 50 people, at least half of whom were in some kind of distress, the others anxiously concerned about them.  These were in addition to the patients arriving by ambulance through a separate entrance. It was surprisingly quiet – each person silent in their own island of pain and worry.

We were sent straightaway to the Urgent Treatment Centre, which implied (correctly) that our need was actually less urgent than others. This waiting room was less packed and indeed some people were sitting outside the door in the cool of the garden area. The notice board announced a wait for adults of a rather precise 174 minutes. A vending machine dispensed chocolate bars and drinks, but all the catering facilities in the hospital were closed. We were grateful that we had eaten a meal before we left home.

The woman sitting next to me was clearly in a lot of pain, apparently from a broken arm. She was whimpering and praying with every breath. There was nothing I could do to help her, apart from offer to get her a cup of water. Over 3 hours later she was called in and I felt her relief. Eventually just Ian and one other patient were waiting to be seen. It was well after midnight when a nurse said the unit was closing and took us back to the main A&E waiting room. I was worried that we would have to start the wait period all over again, but was reassured that it wouldn’t be long.

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The Voice

Guardian: “Tories fear blue wall will crumble at local elections over NHS crisis”

By The Voice | Sun 16th April 2023 - 10:45 am

Today’s Guardian lays bare the opportunities for the Liberal Democrats at the local elections because of the failure of the Government to settle nurses’ and junior doctors’ pay claims.

Campaigners in the so-called blue wall seats – where affluent, liberal Tory voters have been drifting away from the party – have already reported their surprise at finding that the NHS has emerged as the main concern on the doorstep rather than more familiar issues in the seats, such as tax cuts.

“The NHS is the most salient issue on the doorstep for 2019 Tory voters, and now their failure to manage it will be on the front of newspapers day in, day out,” said a senior Lib Dem source. “My personal view is that the reason they keep going for immigration/asylum seekers is that they basically think anything is better than the story being the NHS.”

There is no sign that public support for the nurses and doctors is waning. It helps that that their union leaders, including the RCN’s Pat Cullen who has given a very good interview on Laura Kuenssberg, are calm, articulate and persuasive.  It’s a far cry from the angry union firebrands of the 70s and 80s.

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The Voice

Four in ten NHS hospitals using outdated medical equipment including 37-year old X-ray machines

By The Voice | Mon 20th March 2023 - 10:50 am
  • 541 pieces of medical equipment over a decade old with some X-ray machines up to 37 years old
  • Four in ten hospital trusts have outdated medical equipment at least a decade-old, despite NHS England advice
  • Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey calls for urgent investment in medical equipment at his party’s Spring Conference

NHS hospitals are using hundreds of outdated x-ray machines, CT scanners and radiotherapy machines, the Liberal Democrats have revealed, with some dating back to the 1980s.

541 X-ray machines, CT and MRI scanners and radiotherapy treatment machines are over a decade old, the figures show. It comes despite advice from NHS England …

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The Voice

Hat-trick of Lib Dems hammer Tories on broken health pledges

By The Voice | Thu 23rd February 2023 - 9:47 am

There was another hat-trick of Lib Dems at PMQs yesterday, and this time they tag-teamed to show the Conservatives up for failing to keep key health pledges in their manifesto.

Watch here, with the text exchange after the video.

First up, Ed Davey on the missing 40 hospitals.

It was a pleasure to meet the delegation from Kyiv before Question Time and to confirm that hon. Members across the House are united in our support for Ukraine and its brave heroes. The Conservative manifesto promised 40 new hospitals, but after three years most do not even have planning permission yet. Communities feel betrayed and taken for granted. As ITV showed yesterday, St Helier Hospital in south London is literally crumbling, but there is still no plan to save it, and Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire has sewage leaking into its wards and a roof that could collapse at any moment. Does the Prime Minister agree that no patients, doctors or nurses should have to put up with those conditions?

The Prime Minister
I am proud that we are investing record sums into the NHS under this Government, including record sums into NHS capital, which are going on not only upgrading almost 100 hospitals and developing 40 large-scale developments, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, but investing in more scanners and more ambulances across the board so that we can deliver vital care to people. I am very pleased that the most recent statistics on urgent emergency care show considerable improvement from the challenges we faced in December, and we are now on a clear path to getting people the treatment they need in the time they need it.

Next up was by-election winner Richard Foord, who quizzed the PM on what was going on in the south west:

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Mark Valladares

3-5 February 2023 – the weekend’s press releases (part 1)

By Mark Valladares | Mon 6th February 2023 - 10:57 am
  • Lib Dem Bill to stop prepayment meter installations blocked by Govt
  • Strike Postponement is Welcome Progress
  • Just a quarter of the “40 new hospitals” have received planning permission

Lib Dem Bill to stop prepayment meter installations blocked by Govt

A Liberal Democrats Bill to end all installations of prepayment metres over the Winter has been effectively blocked by the Conservative Government.

This comes after Ofgem announced the suspension of forcible installations of prepayment meters yesterday following a Times investigation into British Gas.

Liberal Democrats have been campaigning on this issue for months; first presenting the Prepayment Meters (Temporary Prohibition) Bill on the 7th December and asking a PMQ to Rishi Sunak two weeks ago urging him to support the bill. But calls have fallen on deaf ears.

Today , the Government prevented the Bill’s progress to Second Reading – causing the legislation to fail.

Liberal Democrats have criticised the“poverty premium” paid by households with prepayment meters have higher energy bills simply because they use a prepayment meter.

Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Energy, Wera Hobhouse MP, who tabled the Bill, said:

This Bill has been in front of Parliament since early December, but the Conservative Government chose to ignore it. Only after a scandal and shocking revelations about energy companies prying on vulnerable people did the regulator, Ofgem, finally act.

It is too little, too late. My Bill would go further than the Regulator, by banning the installation of prepayment meters for a period of time to get people through this difficult winter and to investigate any rogue practices.

With the Government shunning the fastest way to help these people who become victims of predatory energy firms, families and pensioners across the country will be worried about how they will keep the heating and lights on.

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The Voice

Record 350,000 patients waited over 12 hours at A&E last year

By The Voice | Mon 23rd January 2023 - 10:50 am

  • Figures reveal 1,000 patients left waiting 12 hours or more in A&E every day in 2022
  • Analysis shows shocking rise in long A&E delays since 2015, when just 1,300 people waited 12 hours or more
  • Lib Dems set out plan to tackle NHS crisis including recruiting more GPs and allowing pharmacists to prescribe more medicines

A record 350,000 patients, equivalent to the population of Leicester, waited more than 12 hours to be admitted to hospital from A&E in 2022.

The figures were uncovered in new analysis by the Liberal Democrats showing a staggering rise in 12 hour delays at A&E since 2015.

Liberal …

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Mark Valladares

19 January 2023 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Thu 19th January 2023 - 10:30 pm
  • Record ambulance delays reveal NHS “horror show”
  • Latest NHS figures on delayed discharges reveal “living nightmare”
  • Levelling up: Rural and coastal communities taken for granted

Record ambulance delays reveal NHS “horror show”

Ambulance response times in Wales have fallen to a record low in December with a staggering 60.5% of red calls (those deemed most life-threatening) being above the official target times. This figure is the highest on record and beats previous numbers in December 2021 and 2020, the latter of which was at the height of the pandemic.

Figures have also shown that a shocking 78% of amber calls, which include heart attacks and …

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Michael Taylor

We really must stand up for the NHS

By Michael Taylor | Sun 15th January 2023 - 12:30 pm

The NHS is once again in the news and not in a good way. It is fast becoming a basket case with ambulances unable to deliver critically ill patients to hospital in anything like acceptable times, operations often delayed with unacceptable waiting times, people unable to make GP appointments and now a series of strikes because the Tory Government cries crocodile tears instead of funding the NHS and its staff properly.

There is a dangerous myth that has been around in our politics for far too long that the public sector is inefficient and that as much of it as possible …

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Caron Lindsay

Davey: Sunak asleep at the wheel

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 4th January 2023 - 9:56 pm

Listening to Rishi Sunak speak today, you wouldn’t think that the country is in the grip of economic turmoil and crisis in the NHS. You don’t have to go far to read of NHS trusts and boards calling major incidents, or London Ambulance saying they will only wait 45 minutes before leaving patients in hospital corridors. Everywhere there are accounts of traumatised, stressed nurses, doctors and patients in A and E departments up and down the country.

It is all very grim.

Sunak’s five priorities would fail the SMART objective test on any work training day.

He could claim he had done them without alleviating much suffering. I mean what does “NHS waiting lists will fall” actually mean for someone who has been told that they can have an appointment for their hernia in mid 2024? What does “the economy will grow” mean? A tiny decimal point which makes no measurable difference? Reduce national debt – to what, how and what will that mean for public services? And a piece of red meat for the xenophobic right about getting rid of asylum seekers. The one specific pledge, to halve inflation, seems to be going to happen anyway according to the Bank of England forecasts.

It’s all very cynical.

Ed Davey was unimpressed, saying:

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NewsHound

Only 40 armed forces paramedics are qualified to work in the NHS

By NewsHound | Tue 13th December 2022 - 11:20 am

Embed from Getty Images

There are only 40 paramedics in the armed forces who would be qualified to work in the NHS, figures uncovered by the Liberal Democrats have revealed.

The government has admitted in response to a parliamentary question that the armed forces have 107 paramedics, of which 40 are confirmed as meeting the qualification requirements set out by the Health and Care Professions Council. These are the qualifications needed in order to practise as a paramedic in the UK.

The figures were uncovered through a parliamentary question tabled by Liberal Democrat Health Spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP.

It comes as the government has set out plans to bring in military personnel to drive ambulances and support the NHS during the strikes due to take place this month.

Daisy Cooper said:

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NHS Strikes – view from the back of an ambulance

By Andy Boddington | Thu 8th December 2022 - 5:30 pm

It is the season of goodwill, the season of health services being stretched to the limit and this year, the season of strikes, including amongst some of our most dedicated health professionals. Nurses and ambulance crews. The government having applauded nurses, health and care professionals on their doorsteps during the pandemic is spoiling for fight over wage increases. Promising no money.

That is one reason strikers are taking action. The need for some of them to go to food banks. The struggle to pay the rent or mortgage because pay has not caught up with the cost of living.

The other reason is the working conditions. The constant pressure in an understaffed, poorly managed health service. It never copes with demand. It is forever being reorganised but never seems to get out of crisis mode. It never has enough money.

Let me illustrate the issue through the case of Susan. Obviously not her real name.

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Charley Hasted

NHS workers will strike to protect patients not harm them

By Charley Hasted | Thu 1st December 2022 - 8:42 am

LDV editor Charley Hasted writes in a personal capacity on the reasons that dedicated NHS workers have voted to strike and the pressures that have led them to vote for industrial action.

Tuesday brought the news that Unison Members in North East, North West, London, Yorkshire and South West Ambulance Service Trusts have voted for industrial action. They were joined by their colleagues in the GMB Union where members in South West, South East Coast, North West, South Central, North East, East Midlands, West Midlands, Welsh and Yorkshire Ambulance Service Trusts. Unite the Union members in Ambulance trusts have also voted to join Unison, GMB and our colleagues from the RCN in threatening industrial action.

As an Ambulance Dispatcher and Unison member I spent a lot of time thinking about how to vote. I didn’t sign up to stop people getting help when they need it after all. Nor did any of my colleagues. The NHS has spent years being staffed on goodwill and our desire to help people. We’ve put up with underfunding, insulting pay rises and being alternately sainted and damned by the government depending on which way the wind is blowing on any given day.

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Mark Valladares

19-20 November 2022 – the weekend’s press release

By Mark Valladares | Mon 21st November 2022 - 11:12 am

Barclay interview: Jumble of jargon can’t hide Conservative failures

Responding to Health Secretary Steve Barclay’s interview on the Laura Kuenssberg show this morning, Liberal Democrat Health spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said:

This Conservative Government cannot continue to blame the coronavirus pandemic for years of neglect and mismanagement of our NHS.

Patients are being failed as waiting times skyrocket and hospitals crumble. Health workers are on their knees struggling to keep up with growing pressures and shrinking budgets.

Social care is in dire need of drastic reform and consecutive Conservative Governments have proved time and time again that they will not deliver it.

…

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Mark Valladares

9-10 November 2022 – the press releases…

By Mark Valladares | Thu 10th November 2022 - 10:40 pm

Apologies, press release fans, as I got rather caught up in the drama of the US midterms yesterday. So, without further ado…

  • Gavin Williamson anti-bullying video exposes ‘rank hypocrisy’ of Conservative Government
  • Lib Dems: Strip Gavin Williamson of his knighthood if found guilty of bullying
  • Sunak failing the next generation as he refuses to protect education budgets
  • Welsh Liberal Democrats respond to Nurse Strike Action
  • The Government have failed cancer patients
  • Home repossessions increase significantly as budget sets off a mortgage ticking time bomb

Gavin Williamson anti-bullying video exposes ‘rank hypocrisy’ of Conservative Government

Responding to the resurfaced Government anti-bullying video recorded by Gavin Williamson MP during his time as Secretary of State for Education, Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Education, Munira Wilson MP, said:

This exposes the rank hypocrisy and double standards at the heart of this Conservative government.

Gavin Williamson himself admitted that bullying is never acceptable.

Schools rightly have a zero tolerance approach to bullying. But once again it seems it’s one rule for Conservative ministers and another for everyone else.

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Mary Reid

Ed Davey calls for legal right to see GP within 7 days

By Mary Reid | Fri 4th November 2022 - 3:37 pm

Getting a doctor’s appointment is becoming more and more of a challenge. Whether it means explaining in detail to a non-qualified receptionist who triages requests, or having to grapple with an inflexible online booking system, or having to join a phone queue at 8am exactly, or even filling in an online form just to be put in another triage queue – the processes seem designed to make you think it’s not worth it. They are particularly trying for anyone who is elderly, sick or in pain, or who has a chronic medical condition, and these, after all, take up a large proportion of appointments.

During the pandemic we got used to phone and video consultations, but we all knew these were not the most effective way to make a diagnosis, and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that serious conditions were missed. It may still make sense for a doctor to hold an initial remote conversation, but only if an in-person appointment can be made speedily if needed.

But the delays in getting appointments is very real. Years ago no-one would have been offered a GP appointment in two weeks’ time for a new condition, and yet that is what is happening now.

Ed Davey is announcing plans to give us all the legal right to see a GP within a week (or 24 hours if urgent). It is certainly an indicator of the stresses within the NHS if a week’s delay is seen as an improvement. He has unearthed data which shows that 25% of people in some areas have to wait over two weeks for an appointment.  This is in the context of the two week target for suspected cancer cases to be seen by a specialist, where the clock only starts once someone has actually seen their GP. That wait could be doubled if they can’t get a GP appointment immediately.

The proposal is that this right would be enshrined in law, thus putting a duty on the Government to ensure that it happens.  Of course, it can only be achieved if the recruitment and retention of GPs is improved, and that requires action at the highest level.

So watch out for the announcement in Ed’s major speech at the weekend – designed to replace the missed Conference speech. Ahead of that he has said:

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Ellen Nicholson

Why aren’t we talking about Nursing?

By Ellen Nicholson | Sun 30th October 2022 - 4:30 pm

It’s difficult to imagine our healthcare system without Nurses, particularly after the past few years of the COVID-19 pandemic. We all stood on our doorsteps back in 2020 and clapped for the NHS staff on the frontline, putting health and care first, yet so quickly ‘the clap turned to a slap’ and consciousness of the vital work faded. Nursing is an essential service, part of the fabric of healthcare that no one realises they need until suddenly you do.

As a challenge, how much do you think about nursing? I would imagine unless you know someone who is a registered nurse, probably not much. Does the word nurse make you think of someone working on a hospital ward, or do you recognise that nurses are present across all spheres of society, in general practice, prisons, industry, the armed forces, research and academia, schools, local and national government to name just a few.

The previous Health Secretary’s under-developed ‘ABCD’ plan for the NHS didn’t even mention nursing, it doesn’t feature highly on the government agenda or to be honest in policy discussions. There is little understanding across Government and perhaps society of the complex education and skills developed to be an effective nurse, and yet this is the largest profession within the health service, the backbone of the NHS.

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Mark Valladares

26 October 2022 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Wed 26th October 2022 - 11:40 pm

Apologies for the lateness of the hour – I was trawling through my ballot paper for the Party’s internal elections…

  • Braverman appointment: Lib Dems call for Cabinet Office inquiry
  • Cancer diagnosis postcode lottery revealed as over 60,000 wait more than two weeks in August alone
  • Fiscal plan delay leaves families in a cloud of uncertainty
  • Concerns Over Welsh Government Housing Targets
  • PMQs: PM refuses to commit to 40 new hospitals
  • Scrapping triple lock would be a betrayal of pensioners

Braverman appointment: Lib Dems call for Cabinet Office inquiry

The Liberal Democrats have called for a Cabinet Office inquiry into the appointment of Suella Braverman to Home Secretary after she was sacked for breaching the ministerial code.

Liberal Democrats Home Affairs Spokesperson, Alistair Carmichael MP said:

Suella Braverman’s appointment makes a mockery of Rishi Sunak’s claims to be bringing integrity to Number 10.

There must be a full independent inquiry by the Cabinet Office into her appointment, including any promises Sunak made to her behind closed doors.

If it is confirmed that Suella Braverman repeatedly broke the ministerial code and threatened national security, she must be sacked.

A Home Secretary who broke the rules is not fit for a Home Office which keeps the rules.

Cancer diagnosis postcode lottery revealed as over 60,000 wait more than two weeks in August alone

  • 108 NHS trusts miss the two week cancer referral target (72% of all trusts).
  • Top 10 worst places for cancer referrals revealed.
  • Lib Dems call on the Government to bring forward an urgent plan to improve cancer care after NHS targets missed.

New analysis of the latest NHS data by the Liberal Democrats has revealed the worst places in the country to see a cancer specialist within two weeks after being referred by a GP.

A staggering 62,360 people had to wait more than two weeks to see a cancer specialist after a GP referral in August alone.

Despite the Government setting a target of 93% of patients seeing a cancer specialist after a referral, just 30 NHS trusts met the target. Some trusts only managed to see one third of people in time, as a post-code lottery is revealed.

The Liberal Democrats have revealed the top 10 worst places for cancer referrals in the country. Norfolk and Norwich NHS Trust is the worst, where only 34% of people were seen within two weeks of a referral.

Liberal Democrat Health spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said:

This grim postcode lottery is a national scandal. The evidence tells us how critical a speedy cancer diagnosis is yet thousands of people are left waiting far too long. The sheer number of people anxiously waiting is completely unacceptable.

Our health services cannot be ignored any longer. The Government must prioritise resources to clear record backlogs, slash dangerously long ambulance waiting times, and solve the healthcare postcode lottery.

All we’ve had from this Government is broken promise after broken promise. It is time for real action.

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Mark Valladares

20 October 2022 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Thu 20th October 2022 - 10:30 pm

You don’t expect press releases to become obsolete quite so quickly but the past forty-eight hours have been historic (or hysterical, depending upon your perspective), so these, published in chronological order, perhaps sum up the events of the day…

  • Trevelyan refuses to back Truss: Conservatives way past their sell by date
  • NHS waiting list in Wales hits three-quarters of a million as health service “brought to its knees”
  • Truss resigns: Conservatives must do patriotic duty and back election
  • Welsh Lib Dems – Conservatives must do patriotic duty and back election
  • Conservative MPs must block Boris Johnson’s return
  • Deny Truss the £115k a year taxpayer dividend offered to ex-PMs, say Lib Dems

Trevelyan refuses to back Truss: Conservatives way past their sell by date

Responding to the latest Conservative chaos, with Transport Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan failing to to answer whether Liz Truss will lead the Conservatives into the next election, Liberal Democrat Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain said:

Liz Truss and the Conservatives are way past their sell by date. This is a government that can’t govern, led by a prime minister whose authority has been totally shredded.

People worried sick about how to pay the bills are looking on aghast at this never ending chaos and incompetence. The Conservatives must stop clinging to power and give the country the general election it needs.

NHS waiting list in Wales hits three-quarters of a million as health service “brought to its knees”

Responding to the news that the NHS Wales backlog has now hit 750,000 Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader Jane Dodds MS said:

Behind these figures are countless human tragedies. In every corner of the country people are frightened, suffering and waiting in pain because our NHS can no longer cope.

Labour is letting the NHS fall to its knees and patients are paying the price. Wales routinely has the worse health figures in Britain despite all nations facing similar challenges. This cannot go on.

The Government must come forward with a proper plan to bring down waiting times and recruit and retain more NHS staff. The Welsh Liberal Democrats will continue to call for greater investment in primary healthcare facilities, GPs and social care.

We must prevent people from getting so ill they require either treatment in A&E or complex treatment paths if we are to reduce pressures on the system, this starts at ensuring people can access their GP easily. We also need to ensure patients can be discharged safely once their treatment is finished.

Truss resigns: Conservatives must do patriotic duty and back election

Responding to Liz Truss resigning as Prime Minister, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

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NHS crisis: Never have so many been ignored by so few

By Andy Boddington | Thu 28th July 2022 - 3:40 pm

The NHS is in an unparalleled crisis and the whole system seems at the edge of breakdown. Everything from care primary from ambulances, A&Es, staffing of hospitals, through to discharge to care is in crisis. Yet, the NHS is being almost ignored in the leadership debate and by the zombie government.

Last night, ITV news ran a short item on the crisis ahead of tonight’s report on the crisis on Tonight (ITV 8.30pm). Ed Davey said the item was “hard to watch”:

Many might find the leadership debates, or perhaps I should say leadership debacle, hard to watch. The economy is vastly important but it is not the only game in town. The NHS should not be a sideshow in the pursuit of politician’s ambitions.

Never have so many been ignored by so few.

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Ruth Bright

Welcome to Obs and Gynae

By Ruth Bright | Wed 29th June 2022 - 9:41 am

The camera follows a man on a hospital trolley. He gurns at the audience and is wheeled away with his hand up to some unfortunate woman who is screaming.  “Welcome to the NHS” he opines to the audience. We all laugh. It’s the opening of the series “This is going to hurt”. About an obs and gynae ward. We all laugh. Women. Women down there. Women and their unmentionable bits. All intrinsically funny. Apparently.

Not so funny is that during the pandemic the waiting list for gynaecological procedures grew by 60%. During the pandemic many more women who suffer extreme bleeding during their periods or bleed all the time had to go in for emergency blood transfusions because major surgeries like hysterectomies were suspended.

This is not women waiting for something cosmetic or with a few aches and pains. This is about women who cannot work, cannot care for their children or in some cases for themselves they are in so much pain or bleeding so heavily.

The average diagnosis time in the UK for the excruciating condition of endometriosis is an appalling 8 years.

My local trust, for instance, knocks you off the gynae waiting list and sends you back to your GP after a year even if your symptoms are worsening! You then have to have more unnecessary intimate examinations to prove you should have been on the waiting list in the first place.

Of course there are pressures on every single part of the NHS.  However, a recent report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is adamant that gynae waiting lists are growing faster than other waiting lists and that gynae conditions are often labelled as “benign”. Babies don’t wait to be born so quite obviously the obstetric ward is ever open; gynae is often the first to close its doors when pressures become too much.

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17 August 2022: Ambulance Domesday in West Midlands

By Andy Boddington | Thu 26th May 2022 - 12:17 pm

If you live in the West Midlands and are going to fall ill, you better get on with it. Certainly, don’t leave it until 17 August because if you want an ambulance, you may not get one. That’s the apocalyptic prediction from a director of the West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS).

Ambulance provision in the West Midlands, as in many other areas of the country, has been struggling for a couple of years. There are endless stories of delays in ambulances reaching patients. Handover delays from ambulance paramedics at the county’s two hospitals, both maintained by the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Hospital Trust (SaTH), are among the longest in England. There are far too many reports of patients dying during these delays when they might have survived. Too many patients with worse health outcomes because they could not get to specialist treatment quickly enough.

Mark Docherty, Executive Director of Nursing and Clinical Commissioning at WMAS, this week told the media and the board members of the ambulance service that the whole West Midlands ambulance service could fail by mid-August.

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Catherine Royce

The NHS is dying … it’s about the  workforce

By Catherine Royce | Fri 20th May 2022 - 11:17 am

While everyone is focused on the very real and acute cost of living crisis and the war in Ukraine the NHS is quietly imploding, more staff leaving than joining and therefore services collapsing.

It’s not simply a matter of throwing more money at it, we are way past that stage, and as we learned from the Nightingale hospital fiasco, you can build all the hospitals you like but if there is no workforce to staff them, they are just so many white elephants.

The workforce is on its knees and many who stayed on or returned during the Covid crisis are now leaving or returning to retirement, others simply leaving because they are exhausted, increasing the strain on those left behind. The crisis is particularly acute in psychiatry and general practice, where services are collapsing just when they are needed most to deal with the fallout of Covid.

So the fact that there are 10 new medical schools should be good news, except that they will only add about another 1,000 doctors to the workforce annually and only in 5 years’ time, against a calculated shortfall of 15,000 annually. So you may be as surprised as I was to learn that 3 of those new schools; Chester, Brunel and Three Counties, will only be accepting private students from overseas this coming October, and why is that? – simply that the Treasury has not made funds  available to support home grown medical students, £35,000 each annually for the 3 clinical years of undergraduate training; yes, medical training is expensive. The government’s solution being to let these new medical schools admit overseas students instead, who bring with them £40,000 each a year in overseas fees.

Whilst that may be an attractive business model for the medical schools concerned it does nothing to address our own needs and exacerbates the workforce crisis into the future. Meanwhile applications from home-grown candidates have soared and many are being turned down, even though they have top grades and should have been able to expect medical school places.

I think you can agree with me that students coming from countries such as Australia, Hong Kong, Canada and India with that kind of money at their disposal, are most likely to be from wealthy, well-connected families, and are unlikely to be planning to make a long-term contribution to the NHS workforce or make the UK their permanent home. They may stay long enough to complete their postgraduate training but my guess is that they will be returning to privileged positions back home just as soon as they can.

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NewsHound

Dodds: GPs could be forced to leave Wales

By NewsHound | Wed 27th April 2022 - 8:32 am

Yesterday in the Senedd, Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader Jane Dodds requested that the Welsh Government issues a statement on the possibility that 80 or 160 overseas trainee GPs in Wales may be forced to leave the country.

The request came as the Lib Dems revealed that across the border in England, 6.2 million people waited over eight days for a GP appointment in February, up 9 per cent on the previous month.

A report by the Welsh BMA GPs committee earlier this year highlighted that current Home Office rules implemented by Priti Patel and the Conservatives mean that individuals must have worked for five years under a Skilled Workers Visa in order to be able to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILTR).

This could result in 80 out of this year’s 160 GP trainees in Wales not being eligible to stay in the country under ILTR because of limited work opportunities at Welsh GP practices that serve as established Skilled Worker visa sponsors.

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NewsHound

Cooper: NHS rocked by mental health tidal wave

By NewsHound | Sun 17th April 2022 - 11:12 am

The Liberal Democrats have warned the NHS is at breaking point after new figures uncovered a mental health crisis sweeping through staff across health services in the UK.

A Freedom of Information Request tabled by the Party to all NHS Hospital Trusts has revealed that there have been at least 8.3 million mental health sick days since 2017.

The number of mental health sick days has increased every year since 2017, with some Trusts seeing large increases during the pandemic years.

The terrible revelations show that in 2021 alone more than 2 million days were taken off sick by staff suffering from mental health issues – the equivalent of 6,041 years. Liberal Democrat analysis of the data taken from 67 Hospital Trusts shows that Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust has been hit, with a staggering 591,254 working days lost to mental illness.

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Catherine Crosland

Mandatory staff vaccines – No apology to sacked care home staff…

By Catherine Crosland | Tue 1st February 2022 - 3:29 pm

Embed from Getty Images

Not even an apology! – And I’m not referring to Boris Johnson’s statement on Sue Gray’s Report.

Boris did at least say the word “sorry”, even though it was an inadequate, half hearted “apology”. But Sajid Javid made no apology at all, when he made his statement in parliament announcing that the government was scrapping the policy of mandatory vaccines for NHS staff, and for staff in care homes and other care workers.

Around eighty thousand NHS staff would have been told, on February 3rd, that they would lose their jobs. Not for any wrongdoing or incompetence – many had an exemplary record over many years’ service – but just because they had declined to be vaccinated. Just for exercising their right to bodily autonomy, which had previously been accepted as a basic principle of medical ethics.

Around forty thousand care home staff had already been sacked, in November 2021. Care home managers were forced to sack excellent, much valued staff members, for no other reason than that they had made a decision not to be vaccinated. These care home staff found themselves without any income, just a few weeks before Christmas. Most of these people had been on very low incomes, and were unlikely to have much in the way of savings to fall back on.

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