Jeremy Hunt has changed his tune over funding social care as NHS suffers ‘managed decline’ - Yorkshire Post Letters

As we approach what looks set to be the most difficult winter in NHS history, we should be be very concerned at the deliberate running-down of public healthcare by the Conservatives. This is the party that in 1948 voted 21 times to oppose the formation of the NHS, and now their twin strategy is to under-resource and to privatise by stealth.

Last year, Jeremy Hunt, then chair of the Parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee, said social care needed £7bn annually – but now as Chancellor, he has changed his tune!

Long-term failure to fund care in the community means there are 165,000 social care vacancies, so 13,600 hospital beds in England are occupied by patients with nowhere else to go. Meanwhile, 7.1 million people are on the waiting list for operations and one in ten NHS posts remain unfilled.

The Nuffield Trust reports that as a direct result of Brexit we have 4,285 fewer European doctors than if the pre-Brexit recruitment had been maintained, and the Nursing and Midwifery Council calculates that for the same reason we now have 58,000 fewer nurses.

Together with Brexit, the pandemic was a gift to further privatisation.

Hundreds of millions of our taxpayers' money was channelled to outsourced provision including the scandalous 'VIP Lane' for friends of ministers.

The Department of Health and Social Care spent almost 20 per cent more on private providers in the five years from 2014-15, but according to the British Medical Association, two-thirds of doctors judge outsourced provision to be of a lower quality.

Several NHS Trusts have already sold their patients' data to private companies, and US corporations such as United Health are covertly involved. This is particularly worrying, as the USA has by far the most expensive healthcare in the world.

Under-resourcing and privatisation disproportionately hit rural areas.

In Yorkshire we have a higher average age than the country at large. We are particularly dependent on our local hospitals, and this makes a strong case for expanding local provision to reverse the Conservatives’ years of deliberate 'managed decline'.

In 2019 nobody voted to have the poorest healthcare in Western Europe, but that's where we're heading under this government. I know who I'll be voting against in 2024.

From: Paul Morley, Ribblesdale Estate, Long Preston, Skipton.

Yet again Jas Olak regales us with tales about how the UK's economy is in dire straits compared to their beloved EU (The Yorkshire Post, November 26). But a report from last week by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) based in Paris shows that since we actually left the EU economically at the end of 2020 our GDP has grown faster than Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Eurozone as a whole.

Our trade with the EU dropped slightly but that was due to leaving the Single Market.

Also the UK's worst productivity performance was in the decade before Brexit when we were very closely integrated with the Single Market.

We can also now vote in governments who have the power to change things for the good of this country, unlike being a member of the EU where you vote in a government to do the bidding of the European Commission.

Jas Olak may be happy for us to lower our aspirations and re-join the EU but I have much more respect for Great Britain and its people and prefer to carry on as we are. As ever, there is always the other option, if you don't like this country I'm sure the EU would welcome you with open arms, it looks like it needs all the help it can get.

From: Thomas W Jefferson, Batty Lane, Howden, Goole.

Jas Olak of Leeds for Europe cannot accept that the message from your recent interview with CBI Director General Tony Danker was pragmatically optimistic about our post-Brexit prospects.

Even in the quotation of the OECD’s forecast that we would have the lowest growth of any major economy she avoids the context that it was for next year only, that we had the highest this year and will be well ranked in two years.

What we can be reasonably confident of is that our trend growth rate will continue to comfortably exceed that of the Eurozone that she wants us to join.

But Leeds for Europe and other Rejoiners consistently refuse to be drawn into discussion of that point. I wonder why?

From: ME Wright, Harrogate.

Back we go to Lower 5th, Westminster yah-booing between PM Rishi Sunak and Sir Kier Starmer (The Yorkshire Post, November 24).

Wouldn't the PM's castigation of Sir Kier for failing to stand up to the unions carry more weight if he and Chancellor Hunt stood up to those lawyers who encourage, aid and abet tax-dodging on an industrial scale?