The TUC, has obtained figures from 185 hospitals, 126 primary care, 23 ambulance and 54 mental health trusts showing 53,150 NHS job cuts in the next four years, writes Mark Booth.
North Staffordshire is losing 22.5 per cent of its staff; East Lancashire will cut 1,013 full-time posts, including almost 50 doctors and dental staff and 270 nurses, midwives and health visitors; while up to 1,600 jobs are to go at the Heart of England in Birmingham.
This gives the lie to David Cameron’s boast that he would “cut the deficit, not the NHS”. The government is forcing through £20 billion of cuts over the next five years, masquerading as “efficiency savings”, a 4 per cent reduction in the NHS budget every year. This will devastate the NHS and lead to more infections, complications and deaths.
The Con Dems won’t be ditching senior managers or management consultants, which cost £350 million a year. In fact they requested an extra £1.8 billion to pay for the reorganisation. They will slash essential admin workers. As the British Medical Association point out, “even cuts to backroom staff impact on clinical workers who have to pick up the administrative burden”.
These cuts, coupled with massive privatisation, will spell the end of the NHS as we know it.
We need to act now. Keep Our NHS Public has campaigning groups up and down the country. If they can link up with anticuts groups and union branches, we can build a movement to defend the NHS. But while fighting every cut locally, we need a national campaign, coordinating protests and strikes, to kill the Health and Social Care Bill.
