Tag Archives: NHS

13 March 2025 – today’s press releases

  • Davey on PM speech: “we’ll never fix the NHS unless we fix social care”
  • NHS England: welcome steps but won’t matter unless Streeting “stops ignoring the elephant in the room”
  • Findlay should say if he agrees with Badenoch on maternity pay

Davey on PM speech: “we’ll never fix the NHS unless we fix social care”

Responding to the Prime Minister’s speech this morning, Ed Davey, who is also in Hull and East Yorkshire today, said:

There’s no doubt we need big changes like this to fix the NHS after the Conservatives left it on its knees. Now we need to see the Government take the action patients desperately need: making sure everyone can see a GP when they need one, cutting waiting lists, and fixing our crumbling hospitals.

We’ll never fix the NHS unless we fix social care – and I’m afraid the Government still isn’t treating that seriously or urgently enough. Liberal Democrats will keep pushing for the cross-party talks to finish this year, so the Government can get on with it.

The Prime Minister badly needs to read the room. People don’t want more speeches about civil service reform and government machinery, they want bold action that will turn things around for them now.

NHS England: welcome steps but won’t matter unless Streeting “stops ignoring the elephant in the room”

Responding to Wes Streeting’s statement in the Commons on scrapping NHS England, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Helen Morgan MP said:

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Procurement: The beast in the room

I was very interested in the recent article on NHS procurement. As a small business owner I have had multiple dealing with state procurement systems in all their awful grandeur over the years. They may seem dull but in a wholesale reformation of them lies a method of unlocking a massively more efficient and productive state.

UK procurement rules were originally set up to align with EU Directives and with the laudable objective of providing a level platform for competitive tendering for major projects. However intention and execution rarely coincide with regard to British bureaucracy and, while European governments seem to be able to use procedures as they were designed, as they understand and work to the underlying principles, the UK and Scotland used the creation of an extra ‘process’ to:

  1. Set up a bureaucracy of procurement independent of any real control. Like most bureaucracies this validates itself by indefinite and uncontrolled expansion into areas where it is remarkably ill suited (in Scotland the main procurement body is technically under the control of all 32 Scottish local authorities which means it is de facto under no control at all)
  2. Validates its own success.
  3. Instead of simplifying process creates a giddying layer of documentation, gold plating and multiple entering. This of course requires an ever expanding bureaucracy to administer.
  4. Massively expands requirements on interested suppliers by requiring a morass of irrelevant certifications and documentation. This essentially excludes small and medium sized businesses and instead of expanding the potential number of suppliers slashes them.
  5. Since procurement process is deliberately disconnected from the purpose for which it is intended, every project is simply compressed into one ‘standard’ form without any regard for its suitability. Since those who construct the forms have minimal understanding of what they are trying to do they often enshrine economic lunacy in their construction. Since the process is all and its validation is by endless repetition then innovation is completely discouraged.
  6. The result of this is that those who do tender build in an ‘idiocy’ premium to cover themselves against the obvious incomprehension of the process. Both this and the relatively small number of suppliers who work their way through results not in price competitiveness but substantially enhanced pricing.

In an even more Kafkaesque development procurement bodies will often respond to such criticisms by inviting winners of tenders to help refine their procurement processes! Funnily enough those winner then tend to win repeat tenders!

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The NHS Procurement Maze: Why SMEs are being shut out of public sector contracts

I never thought I would end up writing an article about NHS procurement—which, on the face of it, sounds like a terribly dry subject. But having recently navigated the system on behalf of an SME, I have seen first hand how its failings contribute to waste, inefficiency, and the exclusion of innovative and agile suppliers.

Due to a conflict of interest and confidentiality concerns, I am posting this anonymously to avoid disadvantageing my client in an ongoing tender.

The SME I work with has decades of experience supplying medical equipment to international governments, NGOs, and global health organisations; in the past 12 months we’ve delivered over 150 tonnes of medical kit to various humanitarian organisations internationally. Yet despite successfully delivering to healthcare systems worldwide, they remain locked out of the UK market due to the NHS’s absurd, Kafkaesque procurement process. It is easier for UK companies to sell to the United Nations than the NHS.

Reforming NHS procurement won’t make for a catchy campaign leaflet. A Focus Leaflet titled “Better NHS Procurement” would likely be left unread by most voters, nor do I imagine the next Lib Dem Battle bus to be emblazoned with “Making NHS Procurement Fairer” (almost as bad as Stronger Economy, Fairer Society).

But if we are serious about NHS reform, we cannot afford to focus only on treatment and waiting times. Procurement is the foundation of how NHS services are resourced and delivered. If the system is flawed, patient care suffers.

The rationale for NHS Procurement’s complexity—and why it still fails SMEs

Some argue that NHS procurement’s complexity is necessary to ensure quality, compliance, and supply chain security. And after the PPE scandals of the Covid period, that is understandable. However, the system confuses necessary oversight with unnecessary red tape, creating a bureaucratic obstacle course that disproportionately disadvantages SMEs, and actually costs the NHS more. 

A bureaucratic obstacle course

SMEs entering the NHS procurement system face an administrative onslaught. Instead of a streamlined, user-friendly platform, they encounter excessive duplication of compliance paperwork—the same details must be submitted across multiple forms rather than being stored centrally for easy reference.

Ironically, the NHS has centralised its procurement but still requires suppliers to manually provide the same information in different places, often in slightly different formats. This isn’t just duplication—it’s decuplification (doing everything times 10).

Take, for example, Information Security. Despite not handling patient data, the SME had to justify compliance with 200+ security questions and create 20+ new policies to meet NHS data standards for patient data collection.

Even financial and insurance compliance becomes an exercise in bureaucracy. The same insurance documents had to be uploaded in four different places, simply because different sections of the tender required them separately. This highlights a fundamental flaw in NHS procurement: centralisation has not simplified the process—it has only increased the volume of paperwork.

NHS Supply Chain also mandates significant discounts from suppliers without providing any volume guarantees, meaning SMEs risk making a loss unless the NHS orders enough products to break even. Additionally, all delivery charges must be included in the quoted price—meaning that for low-cost items like a 50p scalpel handle, an SME must absorb shipping costs until orders reach a viable quantity.

SMEs are required to provide extensive documentation on social value contributions, despite having fewer resources than large corporations. The level of evidence required (impact assessments, reports, case studies) can be an additional bureaucratic burden, rather than a proportionate measure of social value.

While sustainability goals are important, SMEs are expected to provide carbon reduction plans at the same level as large multinational corporations, without proportional adjustments. 

The process forces SMEs to adhere to reporting standards that are disproportionately burdensome for smaller suppliers. While large corporations have entire sustainability teams dedicated to completing these reports, SMEs are expected to meet the same extensive standards, despite having significantly fewer resources.

The framework contract structure places heavy financial burdens on suppliers. SMEs must commit to pricing for extended periods, yet payment terms and ordering patterns remain uncertain. The NHS often takes months to pay invoices, creating cash flow problems for suppliers.

Despite the NHS’s stated commitment to SME participation, the tender process does not offer streamlined or proportional requirements tailored for smaller businesses. SMEs must navigate the same extensive documentation, cybersecurity, and compliance hurdles as multi-billion-pound corporations.

Suppliers must repeatedly submit the same financial and product data across different spreadsheets and compliance portals, with no guarantees of orders to justify long-term framework pricing.

This echoes Kafka’s The Trial, where the protagonist is forced to defend himself against an opaque legal system without clear justification for the charges against him—a perfect parallel to the NHS procurement process.

The hidden cost of excluding SMEs

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Dr Adam Kay and the vital importance of the mental health of NHS staff

On Valentine’s Day, I went with my Valentine, to see Adam Kay:Undoctored at Newbury’s Corn Exchange.

I have a soft spot for Dr Adam.

His book “This is going to hurt” was a great read – hilarious but in a dark way, and in a way that made a very strong point about the NHS.

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Why populism thrives and how we beat it – Part 2

In Part 1, I introduced some ideas about how we beat populism, focusing on immigration. Today, I am going to look at the NHS, the economy and our political system.

Saving the NHS from Populist Scare Tactics

The NHS is under siege, and the populists love it. They use its struggles to push their own agenda, claiming that the solution is to privatise services or cut back on waste. But the NHS isn’t failing because of inefficiency or because too many people are using it. It is failing because governments have underfunded it for years, forcing doctors and nurses to work under impossible conditions while patients wait months for treatment.

The Conservatives say they are investing in the NHS, but in reality, they have allowed it to be slowly privatised, handing contracts to private companies and driving doctors out of the system. Reform UK claims it will get rid of NHS “red tape” but offers no actual funding or plan to stop the crisis. If we want to save our health service, we need real investment, not slogans. That means recruiting and retaining more doctors and nurses by increasing pay and improving working conditions. It means guaranteeing a GP appointment within a week, so people don’t turn to A&E out of desperation. It means properly integrating social care with the NHS so elderly and vulnerable patients aren’t left stranded in hospital beds because there’s nowhere for them to go. It means shifting the focus to prevention, tackling long-term health issues like obesity and mental illness before they become crises.

Fighting Economic Populism – Real Prosperity, Not Empty Promises

Nothing fuels populist anger more than economic insecurity. Wages are stagnant, housing is unaffordable, and bills keep rising. People feel like they’re working harder for less while the rich get richer. And they’re right—because the system is rigged.

Reform UK’s answer is to slash taxes and cut regulations. The Conservatives promise tax cuts too, despite 14 years of economic stagnation. Both parties push the idea that lower taxes will magically create jobs and growth, but we’ve seen this experiment fail again and again. Cutting taxes for the rich does nothing for working people.

The real solution is an economy that rewards hard work, not just wealth. That means raising wages so that people earn enough to live, not just survive. It means fixing the housing crisis so young people can afford a home again. It means backing small businesses so local entrepreneurs can thrive instead of being crushed by big corporations. It means making the tax system fairer, so billionaires and multinationals pay their share instead of shifting the burden onto working people.

Restoring Trust – Cleaning Up the Corrupt Political System

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30 January 2025 – today’s press releases

  • Water bills: bill payers fronting up the costs for these firms failings is “scandalous”
  • Ed Davey on Brexit 5 years on: Trump Presidency shows UK must lead in Europe to boost security and unlock growth
  • NHS 2025 mandate: lack of ambition “falls so far short of the mark”
  • Nearly 6,000 crimes still going unsolved every day
  • £56m lost to online shopping fraud up 20% compared to last year
  • Welsh Water price rise – customers paying the price for Government incompetence
  • Cole-Hamilton highlights SNP failure on fuel poverty

Water bills: bill payers fronting up the costs for these firms failings is “scandalous”

Responding to water bills rising by £123 a year on average, Liberal Democrat Environment spokesperson Tim Farron MP said:

It is absolutely scandalous that customers will now have to pay through the nose for the shocking failings of water companies. The whole thing stinks.

The government has gone nowhere near far enough in clamping down on these greedy firms and protecting people’s pockets from them.

Their Water Bill has a gaping hole in it after failing to back a Liberal Democrat amendment which would have ensured that creditors, not bill payers would front up the cost of bailing out these broken companies.

Ministers have to realise this endless cycle of failure and customers paying for it will continue until Ofwat is ripped up and replaced by a new regulator that will clamp down on these firms once and for all.

Ed Davey on Brexit 5 years on: Trump Presidency shows UK must lead in Europe to boost security and unlock growth

Commenting on the fifth anniversary of the UK leaving the EU, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

The UK needs to lead in Europe and the world. It’s clear we cannot rely on Donald Trump – a man who has threatened to invade a NATO ally – to secure our continent. Strengthening ties of diplomacy and security with the EU is urgent.

We must repair the trading relationship with our neighbours that was so badly ruined under the Conservatives. Their deal has been an utter disaster for our country – for farmers, fishers and small businesses – caught up in red tape.

So far the Labour Government has failed to show the urgency and ambition needed to fix our relationship with Europe. Ministers must be in a parallel universe if they think we can grow the economy without boosting trade with our nearest neighbours.

A new UK-EU customs union deal will unlock growth, demonstrate British leadership and give us the best possible hand to play against President Trump.

NHS 2025 mandate: lack of ambition “falls so far short of the mark”

Responding to the Government’s 2025 mandate to NHS England, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Helen Morgan MP said:

This should have been a line in the sand for our NHS. The normalisation of patients dying in corridors and people waiting endlessly for desperately needed care must end.

The previous Conservative Government’s shameful neglect brought us to this point but it is so disappointing to see this latest mandate from the Labour Government fall so far short of the mark.

There is no mention of the crisis in maternity or giving patients a legal right to see their GP within a week, as the Liberal Democrats have been calling for for years now.

It appears the Government has accepted a managed decline of our NHS, not rebuilding it to be the envy of the world as it once was. It is only patients who will bear the brunt of the Government’s refusal to step up properly.

Nearly 6,000 crimes still going unsolved every day

The Liberal Democrats are renewing calls for the government to implement proper community policing as new statistics reveal the extent of unsolved crime in the year ending September 2024.

The figures were revealed by the Home Office’s own statistics on crime outcomes, released earlier this morning.

2,136,252 crimes went unsolved across England and Wales in the year ending September 2024 – equivalent to 5,852 crimes going unsolved every day. This accounted for nearly 40% of all crimes recorded that year.

Meanwhile, just 363,843 crimes resulted in a suspect being charged or summonsed – accounting for less than 7% of all cases.

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14 January 2025 – today’s press releases

  • Tulip Siddiq resignation: People expected better from this government
  • Worst 8 hour A&E wait times in 2 years
  • More than 2,000 people stuck in hospital
  • Operations activity stagnating below pre-pandemic levels
  • McArthur comments on assisted dying evidence session
  • Carmichael welcomes protection of coastguard helicopter readiness

Tulip Siddiq resignation: People expected better from this government

Following Tulip Siddiq’s resignation as Treasury Minister, Sarah Olney MP, Liberal Democrat Cabinet Office spokesperson, said:

It’s right Tulip Siddiq resigned, you can’t have an anti-corruption minister mired in a corruption scandal.

After years of Conservative sleaze and scandal, people rightly expected better from this government.

Worst 8 hour A&E wait times in 2 years

Responding to new figures showing only 58.7% of people attending A&E were seen within the 4 hour target in the week ending 5th January, while 18.3% of people waited over 8 hours (the worst since January 2023) and 9.1% waited over 12 hours, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and health spokesperson Alex Cole-Hamilton said:

These figures show almost 1 in 5 waited more than 8 hours at A&E, the worst for nearly 2 years. It is now clear that the SNP’s NHS Recovery Plan has completely failed.

These waits are intolerable for staff and patients alike. The Scottish Government needs to start taking urgent action to address these conditions.

Scottish Liberal Democrats would overhaul the SNP’s failed NHS Recovery Plan, get you fast access to GPs and help people leave hospital on time through a new UK-wide minimum wage for care workers that is £2 higher.

More than 2,000 people stuck in hospital

Responding to new Public Health Scotland figures showing 2,020 people were stuck in hospital at the November census due to their discharge being delayed, amongst the worst on record, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said:

SNP mismanagement has led to eye-watering numbers of people stuck in hospital unnecessarily because they can’t get the care they need at home or in the community.

This creates a backlog right across our NHS, contributing to agonising waits in A&E and ambulances stacking up outside the front door. It goes to show that you can’t save our NHS unless you fix the care crisis.

The Health Secretary needs to re-write the failed NHS Recovery Plan. It’s also essential to drop the doomed takeover of social care that has already seen millions wasted on bureaucracy instead of being spent on services and staff to enable people to leave hospital on time.

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Captain Tom and the NHS

The late Captain Tom Moore is back in the headlines but not in a good way. A highly critical Charity Commission inquiry report concluded that the family members who set up the Captain Tom Foundation in 2020 repeatedly blurred their private interests with those of the charity while gaining “significant” personal benefit.

However disturbing this may be, there is in my view a much more dangerous blurring which made me feel very uneasy when Captain Tom was doing his impressive and very media friendly walking in the garden. It is the blurring of the distinction between raising money for the NHS and raising money for NHS charities. NHS staff and the charities themselves are well aware of the difference but most of the mainstream media gave the impression that donation to Captain Tom’s fund was helping the NHS or saving the NHS.

I was born a couple of years before the advent of the NHS. The GP who supervised my mother’s home birth waived his fee. This was not just because we lived in the poorest part of Newcastle upon Tyne. He had huge respect for my father who had spent five years of the war in a Polish prison camp as well as for my mother to whom he got engaged before he was called up for military service.

I was brought up hearing stories about hospitals that were dependent on charitable donations and doctors “on the panel” who devoted less time to the healthcare of panel patients than they gave to private patients. The limited National Health Insurance scheme oversaw the payment by workers of a small sum deducted from weekly pay packets but the dependents of insured workers did not have a right to consult panel doctors. Sometimes friendly societies could offer help to those who paid a weekly subscription but for many in Newcastle’s West End paying the subs was a luxury they couldn’t afford.

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11 November 2024 – today’s press releases

  • Almost 1 in 6 calls in NHS 24 go unanswered
  • Martin stretching climate credibility with watering down comments
  • Planning applications fall across almost every category

Almost 1 in 6 calls in NHS 24 go unanswered

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has today said that every corner of our NHS is suffering under SNP mismanagement as he revealed that almost 1 in 6 calls to NHS 24 went unanswered last year.

A Scottish Liberal Democrat freedom of information request revealed that in 2023/24, 16.5% of calls to the NHS 24-111 service went unanswered.

The freedom of information request also shows that in 2023/24, the longest wait for a call to be answered was more than 3 hours in January 2024. The average wait for a call to be answered was almost 28 minutes in March 2024.

Mr Cole-Hamilton said:

As these figures show, too many calls are going unanswered and people are facing very long waits before they get through to someone who can help.

Under the SNP’s mismanagement, this is another part of our NHS that is crying out for help. From excruciating waits at A&E to record numbers of people stuck in hospital, patients are suffering and staff are beyond breaking point.

Scottish Liberal Democrats want a complete overhaul of the SNP’s failed NHS recovery plan. We need a new plan that will tackle burnout among staff and address core problems, such as the crises in mental health and social care. That’s how we can ease pressures across the rest of the health service and get everyone the care they desperately deserve.

Martin stretching climate credibility with watering down comments

Responding to Scotland’s Net Zero Secretary, Gillian Martin, telling the BBC that the SNP government haven’t been ‘watering down’ their climate targets, despite choosing to scrap key emissions goals just weeks ago, Scottish Liberal Democrat climate crisis spokesperson Liam McArthur MSP said:

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28 October 2024 – Monday’s press releases

  • NHS Budget announcement: “deafening silence” on social care cannot continue
  • Starmer speech: burden of fixing Conservative mess must not fall on families and small businesses
  • Lib Dems: Labour’s bus tax will hit communities
  • Jardine: UK Budget must help fix the NHS and care
  • Rennie responds to bizarre Findlay speech

NHS Budget announcement: “deafening silence” on social care cannot continue

Responding to the government’s announcement that there are funding plans to deliver two million extra NHS appointments, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Helen Morgan MP said:

The new funding is of course welcome but the deafening silence on social care cannot be allowed to continue.

Patients have

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21 October 2024 – today’s press releases

  • NHS national conversation: Govt must show ambition to fix Conservatives mess or “risks becoming a talking shop”
  • Social Care: Govt kicking the can down the road yet again
  • McArthur responds to First Minister “wrestling” with assisted dying

NHS national conversation: Govt must show ambition to fix Conservatives mess or “risks becoming a talking shop”

Responding to the government’s announcement that it will begin a ‘national conversation’ about the future of the NHS, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

The government must show the ambition needed to fix the awful damage done by the Conservatives to the NHS and care, or this exercise risks becoming a talking shop.

We know that primary care services across the country are at the brink of collapse due to the Conservative Party’s disgraceful neglect, with patients paying the price.

Whether it is sky-high GP waiting lists, endless ambulance response times, or a failure to diagnose cancer in time, none of these issues can be fixed without fixing the crisis in social care.

That is why the Liberal Democrats will make sure that social care is part of the debate and push for a cross party solution to this crisis.

Social Care: Govt kicking the can down the road yet again

Responding to Care Minister Stephen Kinnock’s comments that the government’s plan to reform social care will be published “in the next 12 months”, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Helen Morgan MP said:

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17 September 2024 – today’s press releases

  • Ed Davey speech: “Make the NHS winterproof”
  • Cole-Hamilton comments as Scotland marks ten years since Independence Referendum

Ed Davey speech: “Make the NHS winterproof”

In his speech to Liberal Democrat Conference in Brighton today, Leader Ed Davey will call on the Government to set up a new “Winterproof NHS Taskforce” to put an end to the annual winter crises in the health service.

With NHS chiefs warning that “this winter is likely to see urgent and emergency care services come under significant strain”, Ed Davey will urge the Government to “make this year the last winter crisis in our NHS”.

Last winter, ambulances across England collectively spent a total of 112 years waiting outside hospitals to hand patients over, according to official NHS figures. Between November 2023 and March 2024, 732,000 patients faced A&E waits of over 4 hours to be admitted, with 228,000 waiting more than 12 hours.

For the first time, the Taskforce would bring together a team of experts reporting directly to the Health Secretary, responsible for strengthening coordination across the NHS and allocating long-term funding and resources to prevent winter crises.

Over the past seven years, the Government has announced an average of £376 million of emergency funding each year to tackle the NHS winter crisis. Under the Liberal Democrat proposal, the new Taskforce would instead manage a ringfenced fund of £1.5 billion over the next four years, to build resilience in hospital wards, A&E departments, ambulance services and patient discharging.

This would allow integrated care boards and NHS Trusts to plan their budgets more efficiently to prevent winter crises, instead of just receiving emergency funding from the Government at the last minute.

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The reality of the crisis in our NHS

Today Lib Dem Conference debated health and social care and passed an 11 point plan to deal with the crisis the NHS faces.

The debate was unsurprisingly one of the most heavily subscribed at Conference.

Regular readers will know that Leicestershire Lib Dem Mathew Hulbert’s lovely mum Jackie passed away in 2022 two days after an eleven hour wait for an ambulance.

He had written a speech for the debate today but was one of many who were not called.

He sent us his speech and you can read it below.

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The milk of human kindness

“Reading the room” is a vital skill in politics. It is that knack of understanding, just clicking with an atmosphere or individual and knowing how to make a spontaneous pitch or knowing when to tone it down. Kwasi Kwarteng, with almost endearing under statement said in a recent interview that it was a skill that his old boss Liz Truss did not have.

If you are instinctive about reading the room you can make a lot of money in business or even in politics, but in low paid work like care (£21,000 a year if you are over 21, less if you are under 21) it is an essential part of your role. Yesterday I visited a residential home I know well. You cannot miss the atmosphere when you go in the door. It is warm, friendly, giggly even, with in-jokes and gentle humour. The care staff (not a single one of them, incidentally, British born) have an uncanny knack of pre-empting small mishaps and instinctively knowing when a vulnerable resident is not quite themselves.

What is also striking, as someone who had to use the NHS a lot two years ago, is that my friends working in care seem to have retained this extra something, what Lord Darzi, in his report, calls “discretionary effort” in a way that seems largely lost in the Health Service.

As an inpatient in the last 2 years I have experienced things that would have resulted in disciplinary action against a careworker:

  • Shouted at by a nurse when I tried to use the “wrong” toilet on the ward.
  • Blanked and ignored to my face by a doctor when I politely complained to him that I had been waiting five and a half hours in the ward prepped for an operation.
  • Subjected, under general anaesthetic, to an intimate procedure conducted by a surgeon without specific consent. (This matter was investigated by the police and is now with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman)

Not a single Lib Dem Voice reader will be surprised by this small list. All of you will have your own and have experienced worse.

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26 July 2024 – today’s press releases

  • CQC: entire NHS and care system needs fixing
  • Cole-Hamilton: Fornethy women must be given the redress they deserve
  • Scottish Liberal Democrats respond to fresh NHS buildings delay
  • Stone ‘thrilled’ with Flow Country’s World Heritage Status

CQC: entire NHS and care system needs fixing

Responding to the Health Secretary saying that the Care Quality Commission “is not fit for purpose”, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson, Daisy Cooper MP said:

In recent weeks countless people have told us harrowing stories about not being able to get the care they or their loved ones need leaving them feeling anxious and abandoned.

The Conservative party kicked the can down the road on overhauling social care and sent NHS waiting lists spiralling. It is patients who have borne the brunt of this shocking neglect.

For too long, too many patients have had no levers to pull to stop things going wrong and when they do, complaints and regulatory systems are too complex and slow.

The findings of this report are staggering and the CQC and our entire NHS and care system needs fixing, with patient rights at its heart.

Cole-Hamilton: Fornethy women must be given the redress they deserve

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has today reiterated his call for the survivors of alleged abuse at Fornethy House to be allowed access to the Scottish Government’s compensation scheme for those abused while in residential care.

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23 July 2024 – yesterday’s press releases

  • Lib Dem amendment to the King’s Speech selected for vote
  • NAO Health Report: Heart of govt’s agenda must be rescuing the NHS
  • EA Annual Report: public sick to the back teeth of polluting firms
  • Cleverly: A failed Conservative minister with a tarnished legacy
  • New figures show sewage dumping higher in 2023 than previously known

Lib Dem amendment to the King’s Speech selected for vote

The Liberal Democrat amendment to the King’s Speech has been selected for a vote expected around 7pm this evening.

The amendment calls for a range of measures including free personal care in England, better support for carers and a cross-party commission on social care to provide the desperately needed long-term reforms to the sector. It also calls for the scrapping of the two child benefit cap.

Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

I am proud the Liberal Democrats have tabled this amendment to the King’s Speech to stand up for care and carers. We will be the voice of carers in this Parliament and work with others to find solutions to the big challenge of social care.”

Millions of people voted for the Liberal Democrats because they wanted us to deliver change and a fair deal. Now, from our plan to tackle the sewage scandal to more support to fix our NHS and care, Liberal Democrat MPs are making the case for just that in Parliament today.

NAO Health Report: Heart of govt’s agenda must be rescuing the NHS

Responding to the National Audit Office report which said that the ‘scale of the challenges facing the NHS today and foreseeable in the years ahead is unprecedented’, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said:

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Campaigners hold memorial for loved ones outside Conservative HQ

Yesterday, campaigners, including friend of this site Mathew Hulbert, held a vigil outside Conservative HQ to remember their loved ones who had died while waiting for emergency treatment.

You may remember that Mathew’s mum Jackie died in July 2022 after an 11 hour wait for an ambulance.  Mathew’s courage in speaking out about their ordeal since then has been incredible.

Yesterday,  he took part in this video explaining why they were there.

They also spoke to The Mirror:

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31 May 2024 – today’s press releases

  • Lib Dems announce plans for free school meals for all primary school children
  • NHS Confederation survey: Conservatives have run our health service into the ground
  • Premier League season tickets spiral as Lib Dems call for free-to-air football
  • Towns funding: Conservatives aren’t fooling anyone
  • Rennie responds to M9 crash after “unforgiveable” wait for findings
  • Cole-Hamilton commits to keeping triple lock on pensions

Lib Dems announce plans for free school meals for all primary school children

  • The Liberal Democrats have announced their ambition to extend free school meals to all primary school children, beginning with all children in poverty.
  • The party will fund their manifesto policy by introducing a share buyback tax, inspired by a similar tax introduced by Joe Biden in the US.
  • Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey slams Conservative government for “letting children go hungry in the worst cost of living crisis in a generation”.

The Liberal Democrats have launched their ambition to extend free school meals to all primary school children, funded by a new share buyback tax.

The party’s plan includes an immediate extension of free school meals to all 900,000 children living in poverty who currently miss out. The second phase would see all primary school children receiving free school meals as the public finances stabilise.

Analysis by PWC found that every £1 spent on free school meals for the poorest children generates £1.38 in health and earnings benefits, including improvements to children’s health, education and future working life opportunities.

The new policy will make the Liberal Democrats the most ambitious party on free school meals. The government currently only provides meals for all children in reception, year 1 and year 2. In year 3 and above, the government has set stringent conditions on family income for children receiving free school meals.

The manifesto pledge would be funded by a 4% levy on the share buybacks of FTSE 100 listed corporations, similar to the excise tax on buybacks implemented by President Biden in the US, which could raise around £1.4bn a year.

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Helen Morgan challenges PM on A and E waiting times in Shropshire

We reported earlier on Sarah Olney’s question to the Prime Minister today but she wasn’t the only Lib Dem called.

Helen Morgan has been pushing the Government to improve NHS services from ambulance waiting times to the time people spend in A and E.

Today, she questioned Rishi Sunak after learning that 10,000 pensioners had spent more than 24 hours waiting on trolleys and hard chairs, up from just 290 in 2019. That’s not to mention the 4200 adults who had the same fate.

She said:

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27 March 2024 – today’s press releases (part 1)

  • NHS satisfaction survey: Govt can’t be trusted with NHS
  • Sewage spills rise: Ed Davey calls for national environmental emergency to be declared
  • Lib Dem comment on E.coli in Thames
  • Scotland’s sewage crisis 40% worse than previously thought
  • Bus journeys plummet by 31%

NHS satisfaction survey: Govt can’t be trusted with NHS

Responding to the British Social Attitudes survey on NHS satisfaction, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said:

This is a damning assessment of the Government’s management of the NHS. Years and years of neglect and incompetence has run our NHS into the ground.

NHS staff work around the clock to see thousands and thousands of patients but the public are understandably frustrated that they’re often waiting too long to see a GP, or to get a hospital appointments for diagnosis and treatment.

The public know this Conservative Government cannot be trusted with our NHS, and they will want to deliver their verdict at the next general election.

Sewage spills rise: Ed Davey calls for national environmental emergency to be declared

Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey has called on the government to declare a national environmental emergency after the number of sewage spills in 2023 increased by 54% on the previous year, putting ecosystems already at breaking point on the brink of collapse.

As part of this national environmental emergency, the Liberal Democrats are calling for an urgent meeting of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) to review the impact of sewage spills on human health – for river and sea swimmers in particular. Campaign group Surfers Against Sewage released a report last year showing almost 2,000 people reported getting sick last year after swimming in the sea or rivers.

Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

The Liberal Democrats have been warning this Conservative government for years that the sewage scandal is ruining the country’s rivers and beaches and pushing ecosystems to the brink of collapse.

Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party have failed to listen and as a result sewage spills are increasing, our precious countryside is being destroyed and swimmers are falling sick.

It is time for this Conservative government to finally deal with this disgraceful situation and declare a national environmental emergency. That must include convening an urgent SAGE meeting to look into the impact of sewage spills on people’s health.

Only by treating the sewage scandal with the urgency it demands can we save our rivers and beaches for future generations to enjoy.

Lib Dem comment on E.coli in Thames

Commenting on findings of high E.coli levels in the Thames by River Action today, Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Rob Blackie said:

This is the consequence of 72 billion litres of raw sewage pumped into the Thames in London since 2020.

It amounts to an environment catastrophe in the capital.

The Conservative government have let water companies get away with polluting for too long. It must crack down on Thames Water.

Instead of action, we have seen huge increases in sewage dumped into the river.

If elected I will work to stop sewage being dumped into our rivers and campaign to make water companies pay for the damage they’ve done.

Scotland’s sewage crisis 40% worse than previously thought

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today accused the Scottish Government of being “defenders of outdated sewage standards” as figures published by Scottish Water revealed that that there were an additional 5,668 sewage dumps in Scotland in 2022, on top of the initial 14,008 that were reported in March.

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19 March 2024 – today’s press releases (part 2)

  • Almost 20,000 older people waited over four hours for an ambulance after falls last year
  • Half of places on secondary postgrad teaching courses unfilled
  • Almost a third of pupils missing school and decline in support for teachers and pupils

Almost 20,000 older people waited over four hours for an ambulance after falls last year

  • The Liberal Democrats launch their local election campaign unveiling shocking new figures of elderly patients waiting too long for an ambulance
  • Ed Davey to visit Hertfordshire where he will declare this May “the chance to send this out of touch Conservative government a message”
  • Number of older patients waiting over 4 hours for an ambulance after falling has almost doubled since 2019/20
  • One patient waited close to three days for an ambulance to arrive after a fall

Almost 20,000 older people in England waited more than four hours for an ambulance to arrive after having a fall last year, more than double the number in 2019/20, figures uncovered by the Liberal Democrats have revealed.

The Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey will visit the Blue Wall battleground of Hertfordshire to launch his party’s local election campaign. Ed Davey will focus his party’s campaign on local health services.

The new data was uncovered by the Liberal Democrats through Freedom of Information requests to ambulance trusts in England. It shows there were 19,904 incidents in 2022/23 where someone aged over 65 had a fall and had to wait more than four hours for an ambulance to arrive, or an average of 54 people a day.

This is a stark 96.5% rise since before the pandemic in 2019/20 for the trusts that provided data across the full four years.

Even more shockingly, 1,411 older patients waited over 12 hours for an ambulance to arrive after falling last year, a more than tenfold increase compared to 2019/20. The East of England Ambulance Trust had the worst record with nearly 8,000 incidents that took longer than four hours and 769 that took longer than 12 hours to respond last year.

The West Midlands had an average response time for elderly falls of one hour 54 minutes and in that region a patient waited close to three days after experiencing a fall.

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On a Virtual Ward

Last week my husband, Ian, was bluelighted into Kingston Hospital. He was very unwell, and eventually – not immediately – they diagnosed Covid. He is clinically vulnerable because of a number of medical conditions, and we shielded carefully through full and partial lockdowns. Neither of us has had Covid up until now. Given the way it attacked him this time we could see why shielding had been essential for him before vaccines became available.

The A&E staff at the hospital were brilliant and he was kept for 48 hours in the Resus unit, but what I want to tell you about is what happened next. Ian was sent home on Saturday, with an oxygen supply and lots of pills, to a Virtual Ward. He was given a kit consisting of an internet Home Hub, a tablet, a wearable monitoring device that sits on his arm, a blood pressure device (to be used 4 times a day), a bespoke charger and an oximeter.

We were left on our own to set it up – even though I am tech savvy I did find that a bit daunting at the end of a tiring and stressful day. However the instructions were crystal clear and it all worked perfectly. His kit was made by Current Health but there are other brands in use.

Ian’s health data is being followed for 24 hours a day at the Monitoring Hub, which covers several hospitals. We have a phone number that we can call at any time for advice or help. They also call us when, for example, his monitoring device fell off and they weren’t getting readings. They asked me to have my mobile by the bed so they can wake me if any readings are a cause for concern during the night.

The Virtual Ward team at Kingston Hospital is on duty between 8am and 6pm each day. Every day they have a case conference on each of the patients in the Virtual Ward. Someone from the team – usually a nurse, but sometimes a doctor – phones each day to discuss Ian’s progress. Usually we switch to a video call on the tablet for that.

The pharmacist phoned one day to explain a change in medication, and the new prescription was delivered to the door by the team physiotherapist. She is the only medical practitioner we have met in person throughout the whole process and she seemed pleased to meet one of her patients face-to-face.

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Make it known – we are a party of CAN-DO and Care

Liberal Democrats care about our country’s problems. We have solutions for them. And we know how to pay for them.

A new Labour Government coming this year? They are going to need our help. And what they failed to address in their manifesto; we will need to persuade them to fix.

Some of our country’s worst problems were brought home to me in a Guardian front-page story last Friday.  It was reporting on a survey from MDDUS, a medical defence organisation, of 1671 doctors from the four home nations. The survey found that 65% of doctors overall, including nearly four in five GPs, had been experiencing ‘moral distress’ because of the situations they had encountered in their NHS work. The leader of the BMA, Professor Philip Banfield said, “There’s barely a doctor at work in the NHS today who doesn’t see or experience this distress on a daily basis.” It is because the NHS is “impossibly overstretched”, with its thousands of vacancies for doctors and has a quarter fewer doctors per head of population than Germany. “In practice”, he continues, “that means we can almost never give the standard of care we would want, only ever the care we can manage.” This causes doctors the ‘moral distress’ described, and affects their own mental health.

The research shows that doctors are aware of how the cost of living crisis is damaging many patients’ health, with the long waits for treatment, and the facts of poverty or bad housing making people ill.

Backing this analysis up – as covered in the same Guardian edition – Citizens Advice has reported record numbers of people needing homeless services, food banks and energy bill support this past year. They referred more people to food banks and other charities between January and November this year – 208,000, more than in the whole of 2022 – and helped record numbers of people unable to top up their energy prepayment meters, together with record numbers of homeless people – 41,554 of them in 2023, up by 17% from the number in 2022.

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Earl Russell highlights lack of mental health support for children and young people

Improving mental health has been a priority for the Liberal Democrats long before it was fashionable.

Our elected representatives at every level raise it whenever they can. Norman Lamb as health minister did so much to improve access to services but it’s been a long 8 years since he was in office.

Recently, our Earl Russell secured a debate in the House of Lords to highlight how appalling provision is for children and young people. Waiting times are horrendous. Imagine the impact on your education if you have to wait a year to even be seen. It’s then a long recovery and before you know it, that’s half your secondary education gone. And imagine the suffering if, like too many, CAMHS won’t even accept your referral.

For parents and carers, watching their young person struggle is one of the worst things to endure. And the anxiety of wondering if they will still be there in the morning, every day, takes its toll.

The debate is covered here on Today in Parliament, from about 20:10 in, and below are Earl Russell’s speeches. We’ll cover the contributions by Richard Allan, Claire Tyler and Mike Storey tomorrow.

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Back to Beveridge at Ballot Time

As the countdown to the General Election begins, people grow increasingly nervous. The spectres of triumph and disaster lurk hidden from view as we approach the electoral starting gate.

Some with long memories fear the false step – the promise to reverse Brexit without referendum, the trumpeted amnesty to illegal immigrants etc.

Some with equally long memories bemoan a lack of boldness and differentiation – where is the penny on income tax for education ?

Much my depend on your local political geography. In the leafier parts of the South saying ‘we are not the Tories’ may be sufficient.  In the Labour dominated north it’s certainly not.

This underlines the need to have a message that impacts in the North and does not startle the horses or the electors in the South.

There are such messages particularly in the field of health and education.

I think it is now accepted that the Coalition Health and Social Care Act 2012 was one of the most pointless, opportunity-squandering and ham-fisted pieces of legislation in modern times with most of its provisions (CCGs etc) now abandoned or reversed.

Parliamentarians persisted with it despite the concerns of nearly all health professionals, the Lib Dem conference, Baroness Williams and colleagues like Andrew George and other brave souls.

It was not a charter for privatisation but a definitive and conclusive expression of the market principle when applied to health which although rampant in the Blair years had to be toned down even then to get through the Commons. It proved unworkable in our NHS which still tries to cling to Beveridge principles.

What if though we were to revisit those principles and abandon the costly, bureaucratic internal market in the NHS – where the piled on overheads of administrators, defending as commissioners and providers their own silos, disappear ?  Arguably the necessary creation of the new Integrated Care Boards has already blurred the boundaries within the internal market. Commissioners and providers are now working together as the NHS to desperately husband scarce resources.

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Ed Davey tackles PM on hospital delays

Ed Davey used his question to the Prime Minister today to highlight hold-ups in the building of the mythical 40 new hospitals promised in the Government’s 2019 manifesto. Especially as the National Audit Office thinks it won’t meet that commitment.

Ed said:

Three years ago, the Government made a commitment to 40 new hospitals and significant upgrades to hospitals in most need, but today many schemes are badly delayed. The Royal Berkshire—stuck at the development stage, with not a single pound transferred for construction. Harrogate District Hospital—still waiting on £20 million for urgent upgrades after reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete was

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20 November 2023 – today’s press releases

  • Sunak removes NHS from top 5 pledges
  • Ethics advisor must investigate David Cameron’s appointment
  • Lib Dem Peer’s Bill to end conversion therapy

Sunak removes NHS from top 5 pledges

Responding to Rishi Sunak’s speech this morning, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey MP said:

By officially de-prioritising the NHS and omitting it from his top 5 priorities, Rishi Sunak has shown yet again just how out of touch he is.

The Prime Minister clearly doesn’t care about the millions of people across the country on hospital waiting lists or the families and pensioners struggling to get appointments with a GP or dentist.

Shockingly, the Prime Minister doesn’t even understand the link between a better health service and a stronger economy.

Any strategy for economic growth must have a strategy for better healthcare, yet the Conservatives clearly don’t understand that.

Ethics advisor must investigate David Cameron’s appointment

The Liberal Democrats have written to Rishi Sunak’s ethics adviser, calling on him to launch an investigation into David Cameron’s appointment as Foreign Secretary.

It comes as Cameron is set to officially take up his peerage in the House of Lords today.

Liberal Democrat Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain has raised five key questions in a letter to the ethics adviser Laurie Magnus. These include whether David Cameron will be publishing a full list of ministerial interests as soon as he is appointed, and if he will be placing his investments into a blind trust to prevent conflicts of interest. Currently it is expected that David Cameron won’t have to publish his register of interests until January.

Failure to prevent any conflicts of interests would risk breaching the ministerial code, which requires ministers to be transparent about their private financial interests to avoid any real or perceived conflicts of interest.

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Let’s embrace being the party of the NHS

Following another year’s Federal Autumn Conference, it is important to reflect on the position of the party. This is especially the case given that we may be only 12 months away from a general election campaign. We may finally have an opportunity to help to get rid of this dreadful Conservative government, and in the process, get many new Liberal Democrat MPs elected.

Britain cannot withstand five more years of the Conservatives. Nowhere is this clearer than with our National Health Service. The NHS is in turmoil. Years of Tory mismanagement and underfunding have led to our precious NHS struggling to cope. The morale of doctors, nurses and other NHS staff is at a severe low. While the number of vacancies in the NHS is at a “staggering” high. This is a time when the NHS funding gap continues to be wide and NHS dentistry has become dysfunctional, with people having to pull out their own teeth.

The NHS is of immense importance to us Liberal Democrats, not just because it is a vital public service in helping to advance individual freedom and social justice, but because we had a hand in its creation. The great Liberal social reformer, William Beveridge invented the idea of the NHS in his report into social services in 1942. The Beveridge Report became the blueprint for the post-war welfare state. A blueprint that was largely enacted by the post-war Labour government of Clement Attlee. While it was a socialist, Labour’s radical Health Secretary Aneurin Bevan who introduced an established the NHS in 1948, the original idea was that of a Liberal.

The NHS, health and social care have become of central importance for Liberal Democrats once again. It was incredibly moving to listen to Ed Davey, during his leader’s speech on Tuesday, talk about how he had to care for his mother while she was dying of cancer. Health and social care have become a hallmark of Ed Davey’s leadership, inspired by his personal experience of being a carer himself. Earlier in the Conference, our Deputy Leader and Health and Social Care Spokesperson, Daisy Cooper spoke passionately about the need to address the crisis in mental health provision.

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12 September 2023 – today’s press releases

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

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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