24 hours to Vote Labour and save the NHS

With
polls opening in 24 hours, Labour is promising to breathe life back into the
NHS after years of the Conservatives starving it of funds, running down our
health workers and opening the door to full-scale privatisation.

Since
Theresa May became Prime Minister in 2016, almost two million people have
waited longer than four hours in A&E, almost 450,000 have waited longer
than four hours on trolleys and nearly 70,000 more people on waiting lists. The
Conservatives have no plan to support our NHS, with a manifesto that fails to
provide any additional funding for the NHS.

If
the Conservatives have five more years running our NHS, private provision of
healthcare in our NHS will balloon to £18.4 billion by 2021/22.

Labour
will restore the NHS to be the envy of the world by: 

  • Giving the NHS an extra £37 billion over the course of
        the next Parliament, including £10 billion of capital funding for NHS
        buildings and IT systems.
  • Taking one million people off NHS waiting lists by the
        end of the Parliament, by guaranteeing access to treatment within 18
        weeks.
  • Guaranteeing patients can be seen in A&E within
        four hours.
  • Creating a new £500 million Winter Pressures Fund to
        help ensure patients never have to experience a winter crisis like the one
        of recent months.
  • Scrapping the public sector pay cap that has cut
        nurses’ pay by 14% in real terms since 2010, forcing some to need food
        banks to get by.

 Jeremy
Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party said:

“The
Conservatives have spent the last seven years running down our NHS, our
proudest national institution. Our NHS cannot afford five more years of
underfunding, understaffing and privatisation.

“Labour
will give our NHS the resources it needs to deliver the best possible care for
patients, and end the Conservatives’ attacks on our hardworking health workers,
who care for us all.

“The
Conservatives have already cut our NHS, our schools, our police and our social
care services – and their manifesto is a plan for five more years of cuts to
services according to the IFS.

“We
have just 24 hours to change course and save our NHS, schools, social care and
police services by electing a Labour government that will invest to transform
Britain for the many, not the few.”

ENDS

Notes
to Editors

The
Conservatives have not given the NHS the money it needs

• In their 2015 manifesto the Tories said they would give the NHS £8 billion by
2020.

  • “We will…spend at least an additional £8 billion by
        2020 over and above inflation to fund and support the NHS’s own action
        plan for the next five years.    ”
        Conservative Party Manifesto 2015,
        Page 37
  • Theresa May initially claimed that the NHS had been
        given an extra £10 billion, which she said was more than it asked for.

“Simon Stevens was asked to come forward with
a five year plan for the NHS. He did that, so that’s been generated by the NHS
itself. He said that it needed £8bn extra – the government has not just given
him £8bn extra, we’ve given him £10bn extra.” Theresa May, Interview with
Manchester Evening News, 17 October 2016,
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/theresa-came-manchester-asked-three-12039565

  • However, she has been called out by Simon Stevens,
        Chief Executive of NHS England, who said it would be “stretching it” to
        say this.

“I think it would be stretching it to say
that the NHS has got more than it has asked for.” Simon Stevens,
Public Accounts Committee, Oral evidence: Financial Sustainability of the NHS,
11 January 2017,
http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/public-accounts-committee/the-financial-sustainability-of-the-nhs/oral/45122.html

  • The House of Commons Health Select Committee has
        disputed the figures, putting the increase at £4.5 billion.

“If the spending review period is
considered—2015–16 to 2020–21—that increase is £4.5 billion.”

House of Commons, Health Select Committee
Report, Impact of the Spending Review on health and
social care, 19 July 2016 https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmhealth/139/13904.htm#_idTextAnchor008

5
more years of privatisation

  • Around one third of NHS contracts since the 2012 Health
        and Social Care Act have gone to private sector providers

(Source: Iacobucci G (2014). A third of
NHS contracts awarded since health act have gone to private sector, BMA
investigation shows. BMJ 2014;349:g7606)

  • At current growth rates, private provision of
        healthcare in NHS England will increase to £18.4bn by the end of 2021/22.
        Since the last full year of the previous Labour government, private
        provision of healthcare in NHS England has more than doubled, from £4.1bn
        in 2009/10 to £8.7bn in 2015/16

(Sources: House of Lords Answer to PQ
5389, 11 March 2015; DH Annual Report and Accounts, Table 10, p 40, 21 July 2016)

5
more years of cuts

  • The Tories spending plans increase NHS spending by an
        average of 1.2 per cent per year between 2015/16 and 2022/23, compared
        with Labour’s spending plans that will increase NHS spending by an average
        of 2.3 per cent per year.

“The NHS needs an average of 1.2 per cent
to just keep pace with age-adjusted population growth, the Tories plans means
the NHS will get this, but nothing more.”

IFS, General Election 2017: IFS manifesto
analysis, 26 May 2017

  • Under the Tories the UK would face the lowest period of
        spending increases in NHS history.

“A real increase of £8 billion over the
next five years would extend what is easily the lowest period of spending
increases in NHS history to 12 years”

IFS, General Election 2017: IFS manifesto
analysis, 26 May 2017

  • This has resulted in the IFS saying that Conservative
        plans for the NHS may well be undeliverable.

“Conservative plans for NHS spending look
very tight indeed and may well be undeliverable.”

Institute for Fiscal Studies, Press
Release, 26 May 2017 – https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/9259

  • While the influential health charity, the King’s Fund
        says that cuts are having an impact on frontline care.

“The budget for NHS England is projected
to rise by more than £8 billion in real terms between 2015/16 and 2020/21,
technically meeting the manifesto commitment to fund the implementation of the
NHS five year forward view. However, the budget for the Department of Health –
the definition used by previous governments to measure health spending – will
increase by only £4.6 billion over this period. Cuts in areas of health
spending that have not been protected are having an impact on frontline care.”

The King’s Fund, 12 May 2017, https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/articles/government-pledge-nhs-funding 

Funding

  • Funding for Labour’s New Deal for NHS Patients will be
        met from Income Tax on the top five per cent of earners with additional
        funding from Corporation Tax, higher rate insurance premium tax on private
        medical insurance and Labour’s National Transformation Fund of capital
        expenditure.
  • The lifting of the public sector pay cap, will be
        funded from a proportion of our previously announced gradual increases in
        Corporation Tax.
  • As part of Labour’s National Transformation Fund, £10
        billion across the course of the Parliament will be used for capital
        investment in the NHS, matching the estimated need identified by NHS
        Providers.
  • In total this represents a cash boost of £37 billion
        for the English NHS across the course of the Parliament.