Saving The NHS

In 1997, Blair warned the electorate that they had “just 24 hours to save the NHS.” He was going to slash waiting lists, recruit more staff and radically restructure the Health Service.

What he did was restructure the waiting list system so that rather than going straight onto a waiting list, you had to first see a consultant to get approval for treatment. So, rather than have 100 people on a waiting list you’d have 50 people on a waiting list and 50 waiting to be put onto the waiting list and while the same number of people would end up waiting the same amount of time to be treated, Labour spin was able to technically argue that the waiting lists were now much shorter.

As for recruitment, things have gotten worse. We are now faced with a looming NHS recruitment crisis (http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1245914,00.html) with an imminent shortfall in doctors and nurses, at a time when NHS trusts are shedding jobs to try and minimise their debts.

According to statistics from the Department of Health (http://news.excite.co.uk/uk/28488) the forecast deficit for 2006-2007 is £1.32 BILLION. However, regional trusts have been building cash reserves by making staff redundant and holding back on training and public health budgets to compensate for the debt in a bid to break even. 37,000 NHS jobs are expected to be lost in 2007 and by 2011 we are predicted to have a shortfall of 1,100 junior doctors, 1,200 GPs and 14,000 nurses.

In other words, in order to balance the books we are losing staff we can’t afford to lose and the ones we are keeping are not receiving the training they need, while cuts in public health budgets can only lead to more widespread illnesses meaning a future strain on already thinly-stretched resources.

While telling the BBC One's "Politics Show" how his legacy was going to be long-lasting, Tony Blair explained that "When we came to power, people used to die on waiting lists waiting for their heart operations. People don't do that any more."" (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6557439.stm).

He didn't mention how many people were now dying as they waited to get put onto the waiting list. Nor did he mention, as the Royal College of Nursing pointed out (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6560497.stm) that 22,300 NHS jobs have been lost in the last 18 months due to NHS budget deficits.

In fact, staff shortages are so acute that student nurses are being left on their own with patients, despite guidelines that state that (apart from those in their final year of training) they should always be monitored, meaning that patient safety is being compromised as people are left in the care of untrained, unqualified and unsupervised staff. (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6552249.stm)