LETTER: NHS - The blame lies with politics

Mr Bingham MP says keep politics out of the discussions about the crisis in our NHS, and the Red Cross's urgent comment about a humanitarian crisis is unwarranted.

Mr Bingham, I ask you to watch one of the excellent television programmes over the last two weeks showing the problems on a daily basis in hospitals.

On trolleys for over 30 hours, cancer patients arriving for their operation and being turned away three times.

Close to half of hospitals have declared major alerts for lack of beds, Why? Mr Bingham, it’s your Government’s politics.

You have cut 13,822 beds since 2010; you have recently cut 538 staff from the Department of Health in a ‘reducing costs’ exercise; public health is cut by cash staffed councils storing up worse problems for hospitals like reducing social care. The King’s Fund has shown the NHS got £4.5million not the £10m extra by 2020, and they say it’s zero increase for 2018, the NHS 70th year of celebration.

These Mr Bingham, like the Government’s refusal to pay the nurses after an independent body recommended one per cent some years ago are all political actions.

It’s a political decision to put in to the health service eight per cent Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while France and many Euro countries put in 11 per cent. Why? It’s politics to try to divert the blame and responsibility to patients and accident and emergency, or to GP opening hours.

During your Christmas break did you spend a day observing in Chesterfield Hospital? If not, I suggest you do.

Chris Preston

By email