• WE note with concern that the crisis in the NHS has reached a new level in recent weeks, with the Red Cross declaring a “humanitarian crisis” and being forced to intervene.

We believe this government has helped to create the crisis. Hospitals are underfunded, social care has collapsed, which puts more pressure on hospitals, staff are overworked and con­ditions are deteriorating.

The government’s drive to privatise the NHS will only make this situation worse. Hospitals, GPs, mental health, ambulance and community services are on their knees. On a local level across north London we will more and more see the effects of the squeeze on NHS funding.

We must take action now to defend our NHS or we risk losing it forever. We pledge to join the growing movement to save the NHS from destruction, including through supporting the national demonstration tomorrow (Saturday) and calling for a fully-funded, publicly-owned NHS.

MATT WILLGRESS, North London People’s Assembly Against Austerity;
ORLANDO HILL, North London Stop the War Coalition;
BEN HAYES, Momentum Islington;
ANDY BAIN, Islington Hands Off Our Public Services;
SHIRLEY FRANKLIN, Chair, Defend Whittington Hospital Coalition;
KEN MULLER, Joint secretary, Islington NUT;
ANNETTE THOMAS, Islington Pensioners’ Forum;
FIONA MONKMAN, Branch chair, Islington Unison;
TERRY CONWAY, Co-chair, Unite Islington community branch;
WENDY SAVAGE, President, Islington Keep Our NHS Public

• OUR NHS and social care system are suffering severe cuts and increasing privatisation, whatever government propaganda tells you.

Further cuts are now being demanded through the STPs (sustainability and transformation plans). Yet few specifics of these frightening plans are being made public. Lest people start campaigning against them?

In Islington and other North Central London boroughs, 550 hospital beds will be cut so the government’s austerity policy can ensure £1.2bn less than current spending by 2021. Even Tory Barnet Council has refused to sign its STP agreement. Whittington Hospital wards are already understaffed. Junior doctors are run ragged. “Self-care” at home is the order of the day, with most older, frail  and disabled people having to pay or get no social care at all.

Islington Keep Our NHS Public will be marching at tomorrow’s  NHS demonstration, with many other groups and trades unions, to demand the government provide funding to stop the health and social care crisis. Increasing council tax is no answer. This can’t plug the huge funding gap, and would merely penalise poorer boroughs, where need is greatest. Funding needs to be raised through progressive tax rates on wealthy bankers, business people and their like. In 2008, the government was happy to spend the nation’s taxation on rescuing banks in crisis. Yet patients, disabled people and the elderly are being left to suffer now.

Some patients are already dying from lack of treatment. Remember the woman in east Sussex with brain bleeds who was left to die last week. If you can’t demonstrate tomorrow, then write to the PM, MPs, councillors and leading bureaucrats at the Whittington to let them know your views on the NHS crisis.

JAN POLLOCK
N6