Letter from senior health professionals say coalition has left NHS in weakest position ever and calls on people to use votes to reinstate service
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Leading doctors in the NHS have accused the coalition government of a catalogue of broken promises, funding cuts and destructive legislation which has left the health service weaker than ever before in its history.
In a letter to the Guardian, more than 100 senior doctors pass a damning judgement of the government’s stewardship of the NHS, which they say is under pressure because of unnecessary market-oriented reforms.
“As medical and public health professionals our primary concern is for all patients. We invite voters to consider carefully how the NHS has fared over the last five years, and to use their vote to ensure that the NHS in England is reinstated,” they write.
The signatories to the letter include Dr Clare Gerada, former chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners; Prof John Ashton, retired director of public health; epidemiologist professor Michel Coleman; Simon Capewell, professor of public health in Liverpool; Trisha Greenhalgh, professor of primary care at Oxford; Martin McKee, professor of European public health, and Raymond Tallis, emeritus professor of geriatric medicine in Manchester.
The letter, which the doctors have written in a private capacity, challenges the government on its NHS record and deplores the current pressures facing the health service.
Entering the last election, David Cameron assured voters that the NHS was safe in Conservative hands. The doctors, however, say the NHS “is withering away and if things carry on as they are then in future people will be denied care they once had under the NHS and have to pay more for health services. Privatisation not only threatens coordinated services but also jeopardises training of our future health care providers and medical research, particularly that of public health.”
Just a week ago, 100 senior business leaders wrote to the Telegraph, claiming a Labour government would “threaten jobs and deter investment” in the UK. The NHS is a potentially difficult issue for the Tories and a strong suit for Labour.
The letter attacks the Lansley reforms, which were passed by parliament in 2012 as the Health and Social Care Act. They were “already leading to the rapid and unwanted expansion of the role of commercial companies in the NHS. Lansley’s Act is denationalising healthcare because the abolition of the duty to provide a NHS throughout England, abdicates government responsibility for universal services to ad hoc bodies (such as clinical commissioning groups) and competitive markets controlled by private sector-dominated quangos,” they write.
The squeeze was hitting patients: “People may be unaware that under the coalition, dozens of accident and emergency departments and maternity units have been closed or earmarked for closure or downgrading. In addition, 51 NHS walk-in centres have been closed or downgraded in this time, and more than 60 ambulance stations have shut and more than 100 general practices are at risk of closure.”
Thousands of NHS beds had closed since 2010, they say, while mental health and primary care were in disarray and public health had been “wrenched” out of the NHS and was now the responsibility of local authorities.
Research by the Telegraph shows that dozens of NHS maternity and A&E units have been closed or downgraded since the last election, with even more under threat.
www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/07/more-than-100-top-doctors-attack-government-record-on-nhs