A Guardian article today shows that the English NHS is heading towards a £1billion deficit this year. This is an ACTUAL deficit that is occurring due to the coalitions unwanted reform and sacking of frontline staff. Jeremy Hunt has spent £1.4billion on redundancies, and has now spent £3.9billion filling in the gaps with temporary agency staff. Understaffed wards have been forced to turn to private firms for cover, some of whom charge £1000 for a shift and are making huge profits. This is part of what is making the English NHS unsustainable, and is part of a wider privatisation agenda that is being implemented by the coalition. This will be small fry if the NHS is not protected from TTIP legislation, which looks increasingly likely, and which WOULD also affect the devolved Scottish NHS. This is in contrast to improvements to the Scottish NHS that have been legislated by the Scottish government, that are ANTICIPATED to lead to a £500m funding gap, and the confidential papers rightly raises questions about how these changes will be funded. This is absolutely not the same as Alex Salmond having secret plans to cut the NHS budget by £500m, and mainstream media and Better Together have been deliberately misreporting this to provoke fear, which is sadly a recurring feature of this referendum. No-one is denying that the NHS has to adapt to survive - both in Scotland and the rest of the UK it faces significant funding challenges. But for the Better Together campaign to accuse the Salmond of lying about NHS cuts, when the Scottish NHS has been largely protected from the cuts in England which have brought its health service to its knees, is stunning hypocrisy and deliberate scaremongering of the worst kind.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 22:34:18 +0000
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