YP Comment: NHS needs an urgent cure-all. PM under attack over services

SPEAKING at a heated Prime Minister's Questions yesterday, Theresa May rejected the Red Cross's description of a humanitarian crisis in emergency NHS care, saying the allegation was 'irresponsible and overblown'.
Ambulances outside an A&E department.Ambulances outside an A&E department.
Ambulances outside an A&E department.

If she is right to criticise this attention-seeking claim, it should not for one moment detract from the severity of the challenges facing the NHS.

When Tracy Brabin, Labour’s Batley & Spen MP, raised concerns about the downgrading of Dewsbury Hospital at PMQs she was told by the Prime Minister that local NHS services were best placed to deal with local disputes. This is a wholly inadequate response when there are reports of some patients having to wait 20 hours at A&E.

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The BMA leader, Dr Mark Porter, has accused the Government of “wilfully ignoring” the scale of the crisis in the NHS and said the Prime Minister’s attempts to play down the pressure that services are under shows she is out of touch with both patients and frontline staff. His criticism comes after Professor Jane Dacre, head of the Royal College of Physicians, warned that the NHS was facing its worst ever winter crisis with underfunding, a lack of 
staff and problems with social care exacerbating 
the situation.

Ministers have tried to make political capital out of their pledge to spend £8.4bn above inflation by 2020, but the harsh reality is that throwing money at the problem will not, on its own, solve the deep-rooted problems facing the NHS.

The time has come for MPs to put aside their political differences. A trio of former health ministers are calling for a cross-party commission to be set up to review the future of the NHS and social care in England.

This has to be the way forward if we are to have any chance of curing the ills that continue to beset our National Health Service, because without radical change the future looks bleak.

Speeding coroner

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AS someone who has sat and listened to the harrowing testimony of grieving relatives that have lost loved ones in road traffic accidents over the years, it is hard to comprehend that a coroner should repeatedly break the speed limit.

The fact it is such a respected figure as David Hinchliff, senior coroner for West Yorkshire, only compounds this incredulity. Mr Hinchliff, who has been banned from driving for six months after racking up 12 penalty points for speeding in three years, admitted he was “not proud” to have been banned from the road as a result of several “low-level speeding” offences.

Nor should he be. In his role as coroner, Mr Hinchliff regularly presides over inquests involving road deaths, some of which feature speeding drivers. As recently as May last year, he ruled on a hearing into the death of a motorcyclist who was travelling over the speed limit and hit a lorry which was performing a U-turn.

The road safety charity Brake has long campaigned about the dangers of speeding on our roads and works every day with families up and down the country whose lives have been destroyed because someone chose to drive 
too fast.

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According to the charity, vehicles driving too fast and breaking the speed limit is a contributory factor in more than one in four fatal crashes in the UK – a statistic that Mr Hinchliff ought to be well aware of.

Speeding can ruin lives and we have the right to expect prominent public figures like Mr Hinchliff to set a better example. We can only hope that he has learned his lesson and heeds this wake-up call in the future.

A running start

ACCORDING to Sport England, the number of women playing sport regularly in this country has reached an all-time high.

Even so, it’s estimated there are still around one-and-a-half million more men than women doing regular exercise.

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It’s something that the UK’s former number one sprinter, Emily Freeman, and Yorkshire lawyer Natalie Jackson hope to challenge. The pair have set up a fitness programme which they hope will encourage more women and girls to take up running. They believe that what’s good for the body is good for the mind and combine fitness training with self- development workshops.

Not everyone is capable of running, but health experts say that even going for regular walks can reduce the risk of chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and some cancers, and can help ease symptoms of depression – a reminder that being outdoors is not only good 
for our physical health but our mental health, too.