Millions face dire consequences of rundown of Britain’s National Health Service
By
Robert Stevens
Prime Minister Theresa May and Conservative ministers have spent the last week denying that the National Health Service (NHS) is in an enormous crisis.
Last weekend, two patients at Worcestershire Royal Hospital died after waiting hours for treatment in hospital corridors. At the same time, more than 20 hospitals raised alerts that they could no longer provide basic services to the public. In response, the British Red Cross said, accurately, that the NHS was facing a “humanitarian crisis.”
At Prime Minister’s Questions Wednesday, May said the depiction used by the Red Cross was “irresponsible and overblown” and claimed that the NHS was receiving £10 billion more funding from the government than it had requested.
May was flatly contradicted just two hours later by Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England. Stevens was giving evidence to parliaments’ public accounts committee on the “financial sustainability of the NHS,” and said funding was being substantially reduced. “Over the next three years, funding is going to be highly constrained. In 2018-2019, real-terms NHS spending per person in England is going to go down, 10 years after Lehman Brothers [collapsed] and austerity began.” He added, “We all understand why that is, but let’s not pretend that’s not placing huge pressure on the service.”
Stevens gave his evidence after Chris Hopson—chief executive of NHS Providers—said bluntly in his testimony that, “We have reached the point in the NHS where we can no longer deliver everything that has been asked of the NHS.”
The dire situation in the NHS, which is a life-and-death issue for millions, has been…