Care and Support

In conversation with me on Saturday, an 18-year-old casually referred to Blairism as "New Labour". I was able to assure him that I remembered Jonathan Ashworth when he was running Durham University Labour Club in the heady days of Tony Blair's first term, and look at him now:

The NHS is one of this country’s greatest institutions.

For nearly 70 years it has been there for each and every one of us.

It helped bring my children into the world and it helped to care for my grandfather at the end of his life.

It runs on the good will of the thousands of doctors, nurses and care workers.

But, like all national institutions, it needs to be cared for.

More than half a million Britons are now over the age of 90. 

One in two of us will get cancer at some point.

And the yearly cost of dementia to the economy is more than a quarter of a trillion pounds.

If we want the NHS to meet today’s health challenges, then we need to give it the money it needs.

The Tories have had the chance to do that.

To guarantee the NHS’s future for another 70 years.

So what did the NHS and social care get from Theresa May? 

Nowt, nada, zilch. 

Not a penny to repair crumbling hospitals, or help the millions of patients stuck on waiting lists. 

Not a penny to save elderly care. 

What we saw instead was a right-wing Tory Government give tax cuts to big business and impose another five years of austerity on hard-working families. 

Well, I will not let them get away with it. 

I will not stop fighting for our NHS. 

And I will not stop until Labour are back in power to give the NHS the care and support it needs.