The increasingly impressive Andy Burnham writes:
Up and down the country, A&Es are struggling.
More and more people are facing long waits to be seen, often in pain. More and
more patients are being left on trolleys, because they can't be admitted to
hospital wards. And more and more patients are held in the back of ambulances
as they queue to come in – and even, as Labour showed last week, being diverted
to hospitals further from home.
This is an A&E crisis that started on this
government's watch. When Labour left office, A&E was holding up well with
98% of patients seen within four hours. But since the election, the number of
people waiting longer than four hours has nearly trebled.
What is going on? Undoubtedly, the NHS is reeling from David Cameron's
toxic medicine of budget cuts mixed with a wasteful reorganisation that nobody
wanted and nobody voted for. Cameron has broken all his promises on the NHS and
now patients are paying the price. On his watch, more than 4,000 nursing jobs
have been lost. And the closure of many NHS walk-in centres, coupled with the
chaos with the 111 helpline, has placed a growing burden on A&E.
But there is a deeper cause too. The government's
devastating cuts to budgets for care mean fewer older people are getting the
help they need to stay healthy and independent in their own homes. Council
leaders warn that care services are close to collapse.
Last week, I heard directly from front-line NHS
staff who have seen how these cruel cuts are affecting A&E. For the lack of
simple support at home, older people are struggling and having to come into
hospital. And too many become stranded there, due to delays in the NHS
arranging discharge plans with overstretched councils.
So we are spending thousands on expensive
hospital care when a few pounds at home can keep people well. And with hospital
beds not being freed up, the pressure backs up through A&E, which can't
then admit new patients to the ward.
This is what is happening across our NHS right
now. It is an unspoken scandal and Labour will not stand for it.
It is bad for older people, bad for all patients
using A&E and bad for taxpayers.
Today, to relieve the pressure on A&E, I am
announcing that Labour would provide extra support for these vital care
services.
In March, George Osborne carried out a silent
raid on the NHS budget, grabbing back more than £2bn in "underspends"
to massage his budget figures.
By contrast, Labour would return half of this to
support our struggling health and care services. We would invest £1.2bn over
the next two years to ease the crisis in social care – tackling a root cause of
the pressure on A&E.
For older people, this could make a huge
difference by enabling them to stay in their own homes for longer and providing
the support they need to return home after hospital. For example, it could
allow for an extra 70 million hours of home care across England over the next
two years, or provide home care for an extra 65,000 older people each year.
Over the longer term, Labour will bring health
and care together into a single service to meet all of a person's care needs –
physical, mental and social. Your care would be organised by a single
professional who you know, ending the frustration of having to repeat the same
story over and over to different people.
Instead of accepting responsibility for the mess
it has created, the government has spent recent weeks casting around for
scapegoats, blaming GPs, nurses and everyone else. It is just not good enough.
While the causes of the A&E crisis might be
complex, the lesson is simple: you can't trust David Cameron with the NHS.
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