Letter: Brexit Is Important But So Is Saving the NHS

Published on: 6 Oct, 2019
Updated on: 6 Oct, 2019

From Richard Mithen

Guildford GP and chairman of the Guildford and Cranleigh Labour Party

In response to: Five Guildford GP Surgeries Targeted For Possible Closure In Health Services Revamp

The origin of the path that is now leading to the demise of local GP services (and NHS services in general), was with The Health and Social Care Act 2012. This was a Tory/Lib Dem coalition act that removed responsibility for the health of citizens in England (health is a devolved matter) from the Secretary of State for Health.

Readers may recall it was announced at the height of the MP expenses scandal, and it was billed as “putting clinicians at the heart of local commissioning”. The reality was the start of the privatised NHS we have today. It means clinicians (studies show frequently the most trusted members in society), make the difficult decisions, not the Department of Health directly. All services are commissioned, often to private providers.

This process leads to services sitting in silos. Gaps are now appearing, where previously, goodwill used to hold the services together; a there is a race to the bottom in cost, as long as the bare minimum service provision is passed off.

Our all-too-often over-stretched district nurses, for example, will no longer take routine blood pressure checks for patients not already referred for another matter. A practice nurse, of course, would not make such differentiation in the GP surgery. Waiting times for self-harming teenagers are counted in months, not weeks, and many services are no longer available on the NHS.

The NHS has been underfunded under the Tory government. Jeremy Hunt [former Health Secretary and Conservative MP for South West Surrey] famously said in 2016: “The NHS needs to go on a 10-year diet.”

Many readers will, of course, be of the opinion, that all state-run organisations waste money and are not as efficient as they ought to be. The reality is that the NHS is frequently found to be the world’s most effective health system, surviving with the lowest number of doctors per head of population in the western world, using a whopping 84% “generic” medicines, compared with a world average of 50% (generics being cheaper versions of a branded medications).

Coupled with underfunding, the Tories removed nursing bursaries in 2016. This was a disaster. The shock waves to the fabric of the NHS structure and work force in general told trainee doctors, don’t go to General Practice (chronically underfunded), and if not too late, don’t go for medicine at all (unless you want to move to Australia where you are most welcome!). In 2016 three-quarters of training in speciality posts were under-filled.

So, I get to my point, when Fiona Davidson of R4GV realises GP practices are being, in CCG speak: “reorganised” (read “disappearing”), all Health Care staff and Guildford Labour Party stands with her and her party in appreciating the gravity of the situation.

I say this as a point of fact, whether knowingly or unknowingly complicit with their Tory chums, the Lib Dems were every much part of this sea change in 2012, a change that, if allowed to continue, will lead to the demise of the best (and most cost-effective) health care service the world has ever known, unless, of course, we change direction rapidly.

So, to paraphrase the words of the poem given out to me on my last day of school:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs regarding Brexit and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself about the goodness in society when all others doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait (a little) and not be tired by NHS waiting lists,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Yours is the country that works for all,
And—which is more—you’ll have an NHS again!

Yes, Brexit is very important, but once it is resolved, in or out, we’re in danger of waking up to the fact that the NHS is extinct. Only one party can save the NHS, and that’s why I chair the Guildford and Cranleigh Branch.

Share This Post