Greens offer ‘game-changing’ investment to ‘nurse the NHS back to health’

6 June 2024

Key points: 

  • Green Party previews manifesto with extra spending on health and social care rising to over £50bn per year by 2030 

  • This sits alongside an additional £20bn capital investment to bring crumbling hospitals, primary care buildings and outdated equipment up to modern standards 

  • Greens will increase NHS frontline workers’ salaries including doctors, dentists and nurses 

  • Greens offer “cast-iron Green guarantee” that Green MPs will fight privatisation of the NHS 

The Green Party will today set out a package worth £30bn per year for the English National Health Service by 2030 – more than any other major political party. The result will see NHS frontline workers’ salaries increased, guaranteeing rapid access to a GP and same day access in case of urgent need, and giving everyone access to an NHS dentist. A combined package that they say will restore the dignity of both staff and patients.  

The package also includes an additional £20 billion a year commitment to social care to ensure dignity for those in need and to end the pressure on the NHS from a broken care system.  

This £50 billion health and social care offer will sit alongside al £20bn capital investment to bring crumbling hospitals and outdated equipment up to modern standards. 

Taken together they are part of a cast-iron Green guarantee to a fully funded fully public National Health Service. Green MPs will continue to fight the privatisation of the NHS at every stage – a commitment no other party is making.

Commenting, Green Party Co-Leader Adrian Ramsay said,  

“Our NHS is at breaking point following 14 years of underfunding. Patients are stuck in hospital corridors, people can’t see their GP or NHS dentist when they need to and staff are severely overstretched. 

 “Greens believe passionately in the NHS and we are the only party to be honest with the public that it’s going to cost money to nurse the NHS back to health after 14 years of Conservative damage.

“Not just by shifting a small pot around, but by asking the very richest in our society to pay a modest amount more in tax to fund the investment we need to nurse the NHS back to health. 

“Our plans are credible, deliverable and fully funded.  

“With the political will and a fairer, greener tax system we can offer real hope and real change for the NHS we all treasure.

“With more Greens in the next Parliament we will press the new government to take the action needed to restore our NHS.” 

The Green Party Co-Leader Carla Denyer added, 

“We all know the importance of the NHS. 

“But it is only the Greens who are offering a cast-iron guarantee to push back against the creeping privatisation of the NHS.  

“In contrast, Wes Streeting, the Shadow Health Secretary, said he would “hold the door wide open” to an increased role for the private sector in our precious NHS.

“Our Green guarantee to protect the NHS from privatisation, combined with today’s announcement, represents a game-changing offer for our National Health Service that will restore the dignity of staff and patients alike.  

“It offers real change from the managed decline of recent years and offers real hope to all of us who rely on the NHS.” 

Green Party Health, Social Care and Public Health spokesperson and GP, Pallavi Devulapalli added,  

“I’ve seen first-hand the impact years of underinvestment and managed decline has had on the NHS and the service received by the patients.  

“It breaks my heart when patients come into my surgery and I know they won’t get the care they need in a timely manner.  

“But it doesn’t have to be like this.  

“With the political will we can have an NHS that puts the patient first and ensures world beating quality of care.  

“But for this to happen we need the investment and that’s why I am so proud of The Green Party for being honest and brave enough to say not just what needs to happen, but how we can afford to make it happen.  

If you want real change and real hope in the NHS there is one party that is offering to make that a reality” 

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UN Secretary General’s climate speech: only Greens offer real hope and real change on climate crisis

5 June 2024

Reacting to todays’ speech by the UN Secretary General António Guterres, Green Party parliamentary candidate for North Herefordshire, Ellie Chowns, said:

“The UN Secretary-General has reiterated today that the climate crisis is here and it’s hitting us hard. He made clear that if we are to have a liveable future we need to act with extreme urgency.

“Yet the Conservatives are in denial, being reckless with our future, pushing to extract more fossil fuels. And Labour are tinkering at the margins, ditching their green investment plan and will leave the UK limping towards its climate targets.

“Only the Green Party is offering real hope and real change when it comes to the climate crisis.

“Green MPs will push the next government to stop all new fossil fuel extraction projects, cancel recently issued fossil fuel licences, including Rosebank, one of the largest undeveloped oil and gas fields in the UK.

“They will also press for significant investment in the green economic transformation – something that will be good not just for our environment, but also the economy, creating thousands of new jobs. This investment makes good economic sense as the cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of climate action.  

“This is an emergency. We don’t have long to act. Only the Green Party are offering the policies for a fairer greener country.”

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Snap response to Starmer Vs Sunak debate

4 June 2024

Responding to the head-to-head debate between Sunak and Starmer, Green Party Co-Leader Adrian Ramsay said: 
“This election debate needed to be better.

“It would have been better if the other leaders of other political parties were stood alongside challenging the cosy consensus of Starmer’s Labour and Sunak’s Conservatives. 

“Our NHS is creaking, the cost-of-living crisis is hurting us all – and the need to protect our environment has never been greater.

“But all we got from the stage tonight were promises that amounted to little more than fiddling while Rome burns. 

“This election should be about our chance, as a country, to express real hope and real change to a different kind of future.

“People clearly want a change from the Conservatives, yet Labour’s timid approach just won’t deliver the change our country needs. 

“That’s why we need more Green MPs in the next Parliament – to push the new government to be bolder and take the action needed, to restore our NHS, to build more affordable housing – and to create a healthy environment for us all.”

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Greens slam “dodgy salesman” Farage

4 June 2024

“Nigel Farage is not just a dodgy salesman. He is a crook and a conman.
“He will package his brand of hate filled politics in a way that is populist and that he thinks he can sell to an electorate who are understandably fed up with mainstream politics.
“Frankly though, we’re not buying it.
“The latest organisation he latched himself onto, “Reform UK”, is another smokescreen. Set up to take money off people without offering them membership like any other established political party.
“Greens can see through these smokescreens and his jovial façade and see the divisive hate that pulsates through his politics.

“His politics belong on the extreme fringes not at the heart of Clacton, let alone on prime time TV.”

He continued, “Through sheer arrogance, what Farage fails to comprehend is that the great British public can also see him for what he is.
“7 failed election attempts later you would think he would have got the message but evidently not.
“I’m hoping that the good people of Clacton make this very clear to him on July 4th and instead look for a party that is offering real hope and real change.

“The Green candidate Dr Natasha Osben was born and bred in Clacton and I know will put the people of Clacton first, not just use them as a stage on which to stand to boost her own ego.”

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Greens call for real change to deliver energy security

3 June 2024

Responding to Labour’s announcement on energy and security, Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay said:  

“The road to national energy security must lead to real change – a turn away from fossil fuels and a massive investment in renewable energy generation and energy saving programmes like home insulation delivered through local authorities right across the country. 

“Anything less – and Labour is offering much less – will leave people with higher bills and do nothing to solve the climate crisis that is leaving communities up and down the land vulnerable. 

“It is Labour’s lack of ambition and refusal to make the real change needed that is leaving us all less secure. 

  

“Compared to Labour’s original commitment to spend £28bn a year on green investment, Labour plans to spend just £8.3bn over the course of the parliament.  

“That is nowhere near enough to deliver energy security.   

  

“Labour’s targets focus on the electricity supply. However, to achieve net zero we need to see the electrification of home heating. This aim was ditched when Labour cancelled its £28 billion investment pledge.” 

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