A campaign group have challenged Labour’s health plans following its landslide general election victory on 4 July.
Keep Our NHS Public (KONP), a non-party political campaign group, called on the Labour government to prioritise NHS funding and avoid private sector involvement.
Dr Tony O’Sullivan, retired consultant paediatrician and co-chair of KONP, said: “After 14 years of rising pressures on the NHS and its staff and the damage done, it will take emergency measures to urgently restore the NHS to a safe, strong service.”
Labour, elected in a landslide victory under Sir Keir Starmer pledged to cut NHS waiting times by delivering 40,000 extra appointments each week, double the number of cancer scanners, introduce a Dentistry Rescue Plan, recruit 8,500 additional mental health staff and restore the ‘family doctor’.
KONP hosted its Restore the People’s NHS conference on 22 June at the London Irish centre in Camden.
Healthcare professionals and campaigners discussed the future of the NHS ahead of the election.
This included Dr Pallavi Devulapalli, a GP and the Green Party’s spokesperson for Health, Social Care and Public Health and Mark Thomas, founder of the 99% Organisation and author of The Rational Policy-Maker’s Guide to the NHS.
Dr Devulapalli said: “I feel very strongly that the NHS model is a good model which could work really well.
“Because it has been systematically defunded, we’ve now come to a situation where it feels broken and it definitely isn’t working for the vast majority of people.”
She said patients were facing unacceptable delays in receiving care and called for better pay and conditions for NHS staff to improve recruitment and morale.
Dr O’Sullivan said Labour should prioritise investment in the current NHS model over structural reform.
“It isn’t the NHS model that needs reform, it needs government policy that needs repurposing, it needs a commitment to NHS service.”
He also said a well-funded NHS was essential to the country’s economic success.
“A society such as ours in Britain cannot afford not to have a health service that meets the needs of the population.”
Mr Thomas said the The NHS’s business model is among the best in advanced economies and its current underperformance reflects years of underfunding no healthcare system can withstand.
Comparing the NHS to an injured athlete, he said: “The first thing they need to do is stop the bleeding.”
“When they stop the bleeding, then they can stop to help you can get fit again, when you’re fit again, then you can start competing to try and win a gold medal.”
KONP said Labour’s manifesto failed to account for the level of investment needed to rebuild the NHS, restore staff pay and reduce waiting times.
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