Green Party promises bold action to restore a truly public NHS

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Caroline Lucas was in Bristol this week to launch the Green Party’s pledge to scrap prescription charges for all, during a visit to a community pharmacy in the Easton area of Bristol.

The policy is one of the key health proposals outlined in a manifesto that puts building a confident and caring Britain at its heart.

The Party’s Health Spokesperson Larry Sanders, the brother of US Senator Bernie Sanders, is clear that that means halting the creeping corporate takeover of our NHS.

“If we want to make the nation healthier, we need to do it by investing in more than the NHS. We’re the only party that is consistent and united in our total opposition to NHS privatisation. Stopping the dismantling of our NHS is the single most important issue for me,” Mr Sanders said.

Under the last Labour government, privatisation of our NHS increased by 75%. Under the Tories and Lib Dems, privatisation soared again by another 55%. At the same time, the Coalition brought in the Health and Social Care Act 2012 which explicitly removed the Government’s duty to provide universal healthcare.

Ministers aren’t keen to admit it, but almost 40% of all NHS contracts are now privatised; with for-profit firms operating across the health service under the NHS logo.

The NHS today is not failing but is being failed by politicians and ideology. The only parliamentary party offering a bold plan to roll back the tide of privatisation and restore our beloved national health service to its founding principles is the Green Party.

The Greens commitment to Caroline Lucas’s NHS Reinstatement Bill, which legislates to end the corporatisation of the NHS and halt its sell-off to private firms, has won the backing of the National Health Action Party.

From Larry Sanders in Oxford East to Molly Scott Cato in Bristol West, the NHA is backing a number of Green Party candidates to protect and defend our NHS. The NHA believe, as do the Greens, that health care should be universal, put people before profits and be fully funded.

NHS spending is at its lowest levels since the 1950’s and, at the same time, our NHS has been asked to make £22bn worth of cuts – cuts that researchers have concluded are responsible for 30,000 excess deaths a year.

Meanwhile, the Tories secretive NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs), the official name for the cuts, will see thousands of hospital beds slashed across the country, cutting capacity by more than 5 million patients every year. They will also see scores of A&E departments closed or downgraded and the loss of vital maternity care services in regions across England.

And those are just the impacts that dogged campaigners and investigative campaigners have managed to uncover so far. In many regions, people are simply in the dark over what the future holds for their local health services. In Bristol, for example, there are no details on where an almost £250m worth of cuts will fall.

Only the Green Party is offering a bold and effective solution to an NHS crisis that Labour, the Conservatives and Lib Dems are all guilty of playing a part in creating.

The Green Party is the only party that never has and never will collude in the dismantling and selling off of our beloved NHS. Instead, we will give the NHS the funding it needs to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

As a priority, the Party is committed to closing the widening NHS spending gap and providing an immediate cash injection, to ensure everyone can access a GP, hospitals can run properly, and staff are fairly paid.

Only the Greens are united in their commitment to rolling back the privatisation of our NHS to ensure that all health and dental services are always publicly provided and funded, and free at the point of access, via the introduction of an NHS Reinstatement Act.

Greens will also immediately scrap NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans, bring mental health care in line with physical health care and ensure people experiencing mental health crises are supported close to their home and support networks.