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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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”:
The heartbreak and the chaos the Conservatives have caused in our NHS is hurting patients, nurses and doctors across our country. This piece is very hard to watch. https://t.co/f0WKVOvPcJ
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Today in the Senedd I asked the Welsh Government to issue a statement on the fact Wales could loose 80/160 trainee GPs due to Priti Patel's archaic immigration rules.
We have huge backlogs in the NHS and a shortage of GPs, yet the Conservatives look set to make it worse. pic.twitter.com/71Gs6WzuFi
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.
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.
The Health Secretary Sajid Javid has ignored requests for a meeting with his local ambulance trust in the West Midlands, despite warnings that record delays are posing a “catastrophic risk” to patients in the region.
Board documents from the trust reveal that the Health Secretary was invited to a meeting over four months ago but has still not replied. It comes despite the local trust warning that record handover delays at the region’s hospitals are putting patients at risk of severe harm or even death, as it moved its risk rating to the highest possible level for the first time ever. The trust recently apologised to one 95-year old woman who was left waiting for 11 hours on the floor of her home for an ambulance with a suspected broken leg.
I am a health assistant in a GP practice in south Shropshire. We are working flat out to get everyone jabbed and catch up with the backlog of patients who had not recognised or reported their conditions during the long periods of lockdown and shielding. Further north in the county, the situation is no different and the county is getting worse with the onset of winter pressures.
GPs are overstretched across Shropshire. Hospitals are at capacity with 93% of adult general and acute beds occupied. Ambulance arrival times and transfer times are growing. Nearly two-thirds of 999 ambulances must wait for 30 minutes or more to hand over patients outside the county’s two A&Es. On one day recently, there were no ambulances available in the county. This is much worse than elsewhere and much worse than last year.
I am getting frightened by the growing delays in ambulances picking up patients transferring them into A&E. People in Shropshire needing time critical treatment have died while waiting for an ambulance or hospital transfer. This is a major issue in the North Shropshire by-election.
The handover times at the Royal Shrewsbury and Princes Royal Hospital A&Es are the second longest in England. Sixty three per cent of ambulances must wait for more than thirty minutes outside our A&Es before they can handover their patients.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many ambulance trusts have moved into REAP Level 4 in the last six weeks; and how many in total are at REAP Level 4 as at 22 October 2021.
REAP = Resource Escalation Action Plan. Level 4 is the highest level and indicates Extreme Pressure.
I first asked this question about ambulance pressures👇 a *month* ago – and it’s gone unanswered since. So I brought it up today in the House of Commons. Let’s see if I get an answer by the end of today as I was promised here. pic.twitter.com/MWASs8xifn
In the last six weeks, all 11 English ambulance trusts have been at or moved to REAP Level 4. On 22 October 2021, all 11 ambulance trusts were at REAP Level 4.
Today, at their Conference, the Liberal Democrats have backed ambitious plans to safeguard private health data.
The party is calling for the establishment of a five-point ‘Health Data Charter’, which will set out key tests for whether data sharing is in the interest of the public and the NHS.
They also propose a ‘Sovereign Health Data Trust’, which would bring together experts, clinicians and patient representatives to oversee the implementation and observance of the new charter.
So, the Government is to pour more and more money into the first aid camp at the bottom of the cliff rather than building a fence at the top.
Yesterday’s announcement on the funding for social care does nothing to enhance the quality of life of older people or reduce the demand for hospital treatment or long-term care. 4/5th of the expenditure of the NHS is on older people, there are 1.8m older people living in poverty, with a correlation between income and demand upon the NHS in all age groups.
When campaigning for the abolition of the “retirement age”, which was responsible for a great deal of depression amongst older people many of whom were forced into retirement and condemned to spending the rest of their lives in poverty, I advocated that people should go on paying National Insurance whilst ever they were working, not to squander on more of the same as the Government now intends, but to increase the basic State Pension to enhance the lives of older people and reduce the demand for long term care.
The Netherlands with the highest pension in Europe spends 60% of its health budget on older people: Britain, with one of the lowest state pensions spends 80%. Increasing the basic state pension in line with many other European Countries, could be self-financing (needing only upfront pump priming) with no need to raise National Insurance or any other tax, by reducing demand for both hospital treatment and long-term care and enabling those who do need long term care to contribute more from their income, whilst still retaining their personal allowance, with no need to take savings or capital into account.
Lib Dems have been quick to respond to pay rise of 3% to NHS staff in England. Munira Wilson is our Health & Social Care Spokesperson and here she is challenging the Government in the Commons BEFORE the pay rise was announced:
The Govt bottled it today, failing to announce the highly anticipated pay rise for our amazing NHS staff
Words and clapping are cheap. A 1% pay rise is not enough to thank our heroic NHS staff pic.twitter.com/pRtIIRi514
Can Hancock survive a sneaky snog and buttock fondle that took place at a time when he was telling us all to social distance?
Matt Hancock survived Dominic Cumming’s torpedoes and hell has no fury like a political adviser scorned. Hancock has the prime minister’s backing. Well, Johnson has had his own jolly japes.
But the media are howling for Hancock’s resignation. His behaviour and his future is bound to dominate tomorrow’s political circuit. As Ed Davey said yesterday, the real issue is Matt Hancock’s competence in his role as health secretary. Agreed. But there is growing anger among those told to obey pandemic isolation rules while ministers and advisers routinely ignore them.
We have stood on the streets and applauded our front line NHS staff. We have wondered at their resilience in the biggest health crisis of our lifetimes. We have sympathised with them when they have fallen ill and with their families when they have died.
The reward health service workers will get for their efforts is a measly 1% pay rise. Ministers seem not to recognise that those who have worked themselves into exhaustion, taken on extra shifts, faced danger every working day need a boost. With tax allowances frozen, the lowest paid staff and frontline nurses should at least get the 2.1% pay rise they were promised.
It’s great news that our wonderful NHS staff and volunteers are storming forward with the UK’s vaccination programme. Still, I worry about people being lulled into a false sense of security once they have had their first and even second jab.
Most of us will have had, or be getting, the AstraZeneca (Oxford) vaccine. It has an efficacy rate of 70 percent compared to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine’s 95 percent. These efficacy rates are based on the trials and mark the difference between those who had the vaccine and those who had a placebo (a solution that wasn’t the vaccine). If there’s no difference between the vaccine and placebo groups, the efficacy is zero. If none of those who became sick had been vaccinated, the efficacy is 100 percent.
So what’s changed since my last piece for LDV on this ten months ago? – nothing and everything, in a phrase, it’s got much worse.
Last March the fear of an unknown, rapidly spreading and possible deadly virus, the prospect of the NHS being overwhelmed; inadequate ventilators and ITU beds, terrifying pictures from Italy of a modern health system crumbling in front of our eyes and our own government indecisive and floundering, with no plan and even less preparedness, galvanised the NHS workforce as never before in living memory. Things happened fast; the NHS workforce rose to the challenge, found the energy, carried on under almost impossible odds, and paid the ultimate price.
I won’t recite all the twists and turns, everyone knows them very well, except to say that you can build all the Nightingale hospitals you want, but if you don’t have the skilled workforce to staff them, they are pretty useless.
It is the second part of this Government strapline that causes me more than a little concern. “Protect the NHS”. To me, it is the one thing that successive Conservative Governments have failed to do. We only need to look back at those years of austerity to know just how much the NHS has been decimated.
My local hospital used to provide beds for over 600 patients and at extreme times could reach 650 and there were the staff to provide for the needs of those patients. But now it provides for fewer that 400 when pressed, but usually it is more likely to be about 360.
For many years under austerity the hospital’s budget was reduced by about 5% a year. And whilst those reductions were taking place the number of people for whom this would be their local hospital was on the increase.
It is an outstanding hospital and is proud of what it had managed to achieve in spite of the yearly reduction in funding and the consequent reductions in staff numbers as well.
It is a great credit to the NHS that it continues to provide healthcare for all our increasing communities but it is regrettable that successive Tory Governments have failed to provide the finances.
NHS patients are regularly invited to screening tests for different conditions. The tests can be inconvenient or uncomfortable, but the evidence on screening clearly shows it identifies risks early, prevents disease, and saves lives. Patients are at greater risk if they don’t receive invitations, or receive the wrong information.
Trans patients can request to alter their gender marker and are given a new NHS number. Any gendered words are replaced with their new pronouns. However, this also changes their eligibility for screening programmes as many of these are gendered; men and women commonly receive different tests.
Trans patients may be given a leaflet about screening programmes and are invited to self-refer, and will receive no invitations other than those relevant to the gender marker on their NHS record. Therefore, for example, not all patients with a cervix are invited to cervical screening. Contrastingly, if a cis woman has a full hysterectomy, for example, their GP has a simple form to fill out to remove the patient from the cervical screening register as it is no longer relevant to her body. Trans patients should be included on screening registers that are relevant to their bodies.
Historic inequalities within healthcare for the LGBT+ community results in patients who are not comfortable in a healthcare setting. The LGBT Foundation, with projects such as Pride in Practice, is aiming to improve this, but whilst Public Health England (PHE) admit there are inequalities within services, they suggest population screening is inherently equitable. Yet, the issues they aim to improve barely mention gender inequality or LGBT+ communities.
Our NHS is under more pressure than it has ever been. As I write, brave nurses, doctors, cleaners, porters, health care assistants are putting in superhuman effort to keep people alive, to comfort them and their families when they can’t and to treat more critically ill people than they have ever had to at the same time before.
And all the time taking the risk that they could be next to be lying there struggling to breathe.
It’s exhausting. And it comes after many of them bust a gut during the first wave. Then they barely stopped to rest before trying to catch up with the routine procedures and tests that they had not been able to do.
After ten months of relentless pressure, many are at breaking point. They are seeing suffering on a scale that they had not imagined.
Every day on my social media, I hear about at least one person who I actually know in real life being admitted to hospital.
As I think of them and hope that they will soon be restored to good health, I think about the stressed health professionals and support staff treating them.
Many of those staff are not UK nationals. Those who aren’t EU citizens with the protections of settled status have the hellscape of our horrendous immigration system to navigate. Every so often, their visas will have to be renewed. That is a hellishly stressful and expensive process.
If you came in to the country on a spouse visa, that will set you back £1500. And you’ll have to pay it again to renew it after two and a half years. You also have to pay £624 PER YEAR in NHS surcharge.
So, that’s nearly 5 grand for the first five years. Then you can apply for indefinite leave to remain. That will set you back another £2400.
We’re at pretty much £7,500. On a nurse’s salary? Are you having a laugh? And if you have kids who are not UK nationals, you have to pay for them too.
Right from the start of the pandemic, Lib Dem MP Christine Jardine has been trying to get the Government to give indefinite leave to remain to healthcare staff and their spouses and children.
This week, her Bill is debated reaches its next parliamentary stage. It says:
BE IT ENACTED by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—
Indefinite leave to remain
(1) An eligible person has indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom.
(2) The Secretary must, on request from an eligible person, issue physical documentary proof of that indefinite leave to remain as soon as reasonably practicable.
(3) No fee may be charged for issuing a proof under subsection (2)./ol>
Simple. The right to stay for free for those who have been braving the pandemic, taking that risk, and their families.
Here she is introducing the Bill back in September:
The party has released a campaign video and we can expect more in the next few days:
With millions across the UK calling for a pay rise for our health heroes, maybe it’s also time we start charging serial offenders abusing one of the fundamental parts of our NHS, the GP appointments system. Our NHS knows no bounds and rightly so; the vast majority of people are proud of our National Health Service, yet despite its well-regard it is not being treated as well as it should.
To my surprise, last night while scrolling through Twitter and being led, as usual, down the rabbit hole of the online world, I came across a statistic. Not only was it shocking, but I was further flurried by the fact that not one of my fellow politically enthused friends were aware of it. According to NHS England, 15 million GP appointments are wasted every year. These vital slots of our beloved Health Service are costing millions, due to tactless laziness and lack of consideration for our supposed national treasure. Equating to 1 in 20 GP appointments being missed, it begs the question, did we really appreciate our NHS before this crisis?
Of course, from time to time, other more important things come into fruition and so previously booked appointments can’t be attended. This, however, can be resolved by a simple cancellation over the phone and the rebooking of a new appointment. But, the serious and costly problem prevails when patients fail to follow through with a cancellation, not making the surgery aware of their non-attendance, and thus taking up an appointment that could have otherwise been booked by a different patient. And the costs are not small either. With each appointment costing an average of £30, over £216 million pounds are wasted every year. Not to mention, this £216 million pounds lost could pay for the annual salary of 2,325 full time GPs or provide 58,320 hip replacement operations.
The NHS has launched a tracing App for trialling in the Isle of Wight. How does it measure up against the civil liberties checklist that I authored on Lib Dem Voice on 15th April, along with some excellent additions within the comments?
First, the positives:
I urged that opting in should be voluntary. It is. A liberal society works best by consent.
It is good news that this is an NHS App, rather than being owned by the central government or by a private company. Moreover, as the NHS has overwhelming public support, this makes it more likely that there will be significant uptake of the App.
It is to be welcomed that the App uses Bluetooth rather than GPS. It records only our phones’ proximity to other phones, rather than pinpointing our precise locations at the moment of proximity.
Coronavirus has blown open many of the issues contemporary society faces as a whole.
The UK Government has acted radically in the last few weeks. The furlough scheme has guaranteed many workers pay, and a huge effort has provided support for charities and businesses. Yet many have been left behind.
Those laid off have joined record applicants for unemployment benefit, as we look on from the precipice of the worst economic crash since the 1930s. Key workers have emerged as national heroes, but their low-pay has highlighted imbalances in our societal values. High earners continue to work from the safety of their homes, and companies are still paying shareholders, whilst relying on government bailouts to pay their staff. It is clear the government has not acted radically enough.
Yet Britain has an established history of putting radical thoughts into practice.
In 1941, the wartime coalition government began to envision how British society should look after the war. The “homes for heroes” scheme had rewarded soldiers’ service in the First World War with proper housing, and it was felt a similar repayment for sacrifices in this conflict was due. By 1942, three long years before the war would end, the report was finished. Inside was the blueprint for the modern welfare state, which aimed to pool the resources of every working citizen to maintain a standard of living “below which no one should be allowed to fall”.
George Orwell commented at the time that “it is something of an achievement even to be debating such a thing in the middle of a desperate war in which we are still fighting for survival”. It would take 6 years until the crowning glory of these reforms was unveiled with the official opening of New Park Hospital in Manchester, the first NHS hospital. Offering free healthcare to all at the point of use, the NHS remains unique around the world.
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity’ (A tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens)
In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are in an unprecedented time. I continue to work for the NHS but I am also a member of the Sedgemoor district council. I came across doctors and nurses risking it all to deliver the best for their patients. I also see the local communities rally up to support one another. Crises had, indeed, brought out some of the best in us.
The Government would claim that we are well prepared for this pandemic but the reality may tell a different story. We are still falling short in testing for healthcare workers and screening for the general population. The British Medical Association suggested that in some parts of the country Personal Protective Equipment is running dangerously low. Hospital doctors also suggested that we are low in stock for certain medications such as propofol. Some would also argue that we were too late to implement the lockdown and gave up too early on contact tracing.
Professor Gabriel Scally, president of epidemiology and public health at the Royal Society of Medicine would suggest that The UK is an outlier(£) in terms of its ‘open border policy’.
With families and people losing their loved ones, suffering from an uncertain financial future and a unpredictable impact on our physical health and mental wellbeing, this could be one of the worst of times.
David Allen A clear, credible, principled strategy from the Yorkists! Makes a welcome change.
Sadly, followed by twenty below-the-line posts, providing nearly twenty ve...
Simon McGrath so we get a permanant increase in costs for these subsidies based on ( alleged ) windfall profits. Its another big increase in spending -how is it to be paid ...
Peter Davies @Kira CollinsThat assumes we want to help people more with their energy bills than with all the other bills they may be struggling with. There is no reason why ...
Rob Heale Agree that we need to focus on strategy and have clearer messaging:-
1. We MUST prioritise membership recruitment in all we do, including PPB's, most leaflets...
Kira Collins Disappointed. The most obvious means of reducing energy bills is to remove VAT. Relatively straightforward to do and does not adversely impact on the attractive...
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