Controversial documents reveal that tens of thousands of NHS workers would be sacked, hospital units closed and patients denied treatments if Government proposals to make £20 billion of cuts are implemented.
According to media reports, the plans involve encouraging sick people to email their doctors rather than attend surgery.
They also suggest that standard, but relatively expensive operations, such as hip replacements be curtailed.
The plans appear to be entirely contrary to Gordon Brown’s much publicised pledge to protect NHS “front line services.”
In particular, proposals could lead to:
* Up to 10 per cent of NHS staff being laid-off in some areas.
* Clinical professionals being replaced by less qualified people, many of whom will be sourced from overseas.
* The loss of thousands of hospital beds.
* A significant reduction in the number of ambulance call-outs.
While the leaked documents reveal the scale of Labour’s proposed assault on the NHS, the Conservatives, who are planning similar “austerity measures,” are cynically keeping them under wraps until after the general election.
Media claims were substantiated last Wednesday when Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling insisted that the £20 billion savings would be achieved through NHS “efficiency savings” and not by cutting key services.
NHS observers agree that although efficiency savings can be achieved, the target of £20 billion borders on the impossible.
Furthermore, documents released by a number of Strategic Health Authorities (SHA) suggest that it will be the very NHS key services said to be “ring-fenced” which will be hit.
The SHA covering Kent, Surrey and Sussex proposes cost savings of £1.6 billion in what it describes as a “discussion document.”
This “restricted” document, circulated amongst the health authority’s board members, suggests that 10,000 of the region’s 100,000 NHS workers may lose their jobs.
According to media reports, “The new financial environment demands that the trend in workforce growth must be reversed.”
It continues by suggesting that employee numbers should be reduced by 10 per cent “or more.”
The document also reportedly states that staffing in the sector covering hospitals “can be expected to decline faster and further” than elsewhere.
In London, health managers believe up to £2 billion can be saved from community care budgets, which includes GPs’ surgeries.
Meanwhile, in the North West region, the NHS authority responsible for health provision in Greater Manchester and Merseyside is expected to make about £2 billion savings.
As part of that programme it is now preparing to close an A&E unit in Rochdale during evenings before scrapping it altogether next year.
NHS Yorkshire, which has to achieve £2 billion in cuts, proposes directing more patients to “teleservices such as NHS Direct.”
Perhaps more worrying still is the news from the NHS’s East region, which covers Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk — where savings of up to £2 billion are to be made.
One of their proposals is said to involve the outsourcing of some hospital services to social workers, making them responsible for some treatments.
It is obvious that no matter if Labour or Tories win the general election, the NHS is going to be the loser.
It is also clear that no matter how under-funded the NHS may become, neither of these corrupt parties have the slightest intention of reducing this country’s mammoth multi-billion pound foreign aid budget.
The British National Party is determined to ensure that the NHS should be properly funded and that the practices and facilities that made it a world-class health service in the 1950s and 1960s be restored.
Cuts in the NHS may not affect MPs and Heath Trust managers having private health insurance, but they will affect millions of ordinary Britons; people who can make their feelings on the subject known by voting for the BNP on polling day.
No comments:
Post a Comment