Labour announces £26bn real terms Rescue Plan to deliver real change in our health service
The Labour party is today pledging to end the Tory NHS crisis with a £26bn real terms healthcare funding boost to provide safe quality care, recruit the thousands of staff needed, rebuild crumbling facilities and provide modern state of the art equipment.
Jonathan Ashworth and John McDonnell have announced an annual average 4.3 per cent funding increase for health spending over the next four years, funded from Labour’s proposals to reverse corporation tax cuts and taxing the richest in society
The rescue plan includes NHS capital expenditure rising to the international average, £1 billion a year training and education budgets and £1 billion more to fund a major expansion of public health services, with a focused drive on prevention measures to stop people getting sick as part of Labour’s mission to tackle health inequalities and prioritise children’s health and wellbeing.
The funding plan comes as experts warn the NHS is heading into one of the worst winters ever with hospitals already reporting ‘black alerts’ with heart-breaking scenes of patients, often elderly, languishing on trolleys.
I think this is brilliant news, and will allow us to begin to patch over the deep wounds that Tory cuts have riven into the NHS over the past nine years. We have to save local health services by replacing the beds cut at Ilkeston hospital and ensure no loss of service following the imminent closure of Babington hospital.
To rebuild the NHS, Labour’s NHS Rescue Plan will:
- Increase the total spending on the health service and give greater priority to mental health;
- Remove the ‘tax on the sick’ by ending prescription and car parking charges and end privatisation;
- Invest in the NHS estate to improve hospital standards, improve GP practices and ensure the NHS has access to state of the art equipment;
- Prioritise training and support for the NHS workforce; and
- Reverse cuts to public health budgets to put public health at the heart of our agenda.