mike silver
He can run, but he can’t hide: Jeremy Hunt tries to escape a news reporter as she demands answers about the deepening crisis in the NHS – a crisis he has caused [Image: Sky News].
The following transcript from BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours is shocking – not only because it shows that Theresa May has been trying to cover up the humanitarian crisis in the English National Health Service, but because it was reported by the diligently pro-Tory BBC:
So, “Theresa May, the Prime Minister, didn’t want any of this to get out”:
That the average ambulance wait is currently 40 minutes at a major NHS trust in the north of England;
That a man who had a heart attack waited five hours on a trolley for treatment;
That patients had been shut out of the hospital;
That cancer treatments had to be cancelled because low staffing made them unsafe;
That nursing staff had expressed concern to their unions about unsafe working practices;
That calls on the 999 emergency number may be a waste of effort.
The last point is particularly corrosive; the 999 emergency number has been a quality standard that British people have considered almost sacred since it was introduced, and now the Conservatives have rendered it useless.
And people are still being left to die on trolleys in corridors.
No wonder Theresa May – the prime minister of the United Kingdom, don’t forget – wanted to stop the public from finding out about this.
But it seems the BBC is now well and truly on the case. Having failed to kill this story over the weekend, the Corporation seems to have decided it may as well jump in with both feet, so we got the following:
Record numbers of patients are facing long waits in A&Es as documents leaked to the BBC show the full extent of the winter crisis in the NHS in England.
Nearly a quarter of patients waited longer than four hours in A&E last week, with just one hospital hitting its target.
And huge numbers also faced long waits for a bed when A&E staff admitted them into hospital as emergency cases.
There were more than 18,000 “trolley waits” of four hours or more last week.
18 thousand trolley waits of four hours or more. Wasn’t Jeremy Hunt saying there were only a “handful” of these, only yesterday?
And where was Mr Hunt, exactly?
He was filmed running away from a TV news reporter – and embarrassingly having to U-turn after heading off in the wrong direction.
xxxxxxxxxx
he most revealing lines in Rachael Swindon’s article (extract below) are these: “Jeremy Hunt won’t tell you NHS hospitals have been ordered to hand over swathes of operations to the private sector to ease a looming winter crisis, according to leaked memos . Health officials have also instructed hospitals to discharge thousands of patients in a bid to reduce record levels of crowding, while managers have been banned from declaring ‘black alerts’”.
The message that the Conservative Government has mired the British public – who deserve so much better – in a mess that is entirely their own has penetrated every level of society.
Attempts to play down the severity of the situation have failed. The news media have given in and are now reporting it (although the quality of those reports may still leave much to be desired).
And the social media, where we refused to let the facts be buried, are running rampant. Here are just a few of today’s comments:
This one refers to a claim just made by Jeremy Hunt on BBC Radio 4’s The World At One. He reckons only a handful of A&E patients have been waiting on trolleys:
(I think the tweeter means 1,000s of patients.)
This crisis, in part, is a product of both the privatisation of social care and more recent cuts to local authority budgets (resulting in less money being allocated for care locally) by successive Tory governments. When vulnerable people lack adequate social care they are more likely to turn up at overstretched heaving hospital A&E departments needing to see a doctor, increasing the burden on the NHS and exacerbating the crisis no end. This is obvious to everyone, except the Tory government. Data from councils in 2015 showed they have been forced to cut £4.6 billion from adult social care budgets since 2009-10. That is equivalent to almost a third of net real terms spend. A further £1 billion was expected to be cut last year. Social Care is in crisis.
Mental health trusts in England are still having their budgets cut, despite government assurances they would be funded on a par with physical healthcare. Analysis by the The Kings Fund think tank, found 40% of the 58 trusts saw budgets cut in 2015-16. King’s Fund chief executive Chris Ham said: “Cuts in mental health services are just as risky as cuts in acute hospital services. We are talking about people in crisis who need expert support in a timely way. If they don’t get it, it’s bad for them and their families – and for the communities in which they live.The crisis in mental health services is real and serious. We all need to wake up to that reality. Parity of esteem is a laudable ambition that hasn’t been followed through in practise.” Mental Health Services are in crisis.
Jeremy Hunt is claiming only one or two hospitals are in trouble. This is despite the British Red Cross having to help with a “humanitarian crisis”. An elderly woman died after spending 35 hours waiting on a trolley in A&E, in a tragedy which exposes the depth of the NHS crisis. She was taken to Worcestershire Royal Hospital but could not be placed on a ward due to a shortage of beds.The patient suffered a cardiac arrest. She died in an undignified hospital cubicle with curtains pulled around the outside. A second patient at the same hospital, who was made to stay in a waiting room, died after suffering an aneurysm. There were claims that the hospital was in ‘meltdown’, with nurses in tears and patients lying on trolleys ‘three deep’ in the corridor. Accident and Emergency is in crisis.
Source: @Rachael_Swindon: The NHS Crisis: Blame The Tories – Its Their Fault
