Chronic neglect of the NHS and a lack of preparedness before the pandemic, along with flawed government thinking, has added to the tragic impact of Covid-19, the British Medical Association’s council chairman will say.
The NHS was already in crisis, with waiting lists at an all-time high and record waits for cancer treatment – plus almost 90,000 staff vacancies before the pandemic struck, according to Dr Chaand Nagpaul in a speech to be given at the BMA’s Annual Representative Meeting.
He is set to say: “We will not accept a return the old pre-pandemic NHS, which was so patently under-staffed and under-resourced, where nine in 10 doctors are afraid of medical errors daily.
“We will not accept an NHS running at unsafe bed occupancy and without spare capacity.
“We will not accept an NHS unprepared for a pandemic, without vital PPE to protect the health and lives of health and care workers.
“We will not accept an NHS in crisis every summer, let alone every winter.”
He added: “We will not accept a nation bereft of public health staff, facilities and testing capacity, with ministers then paying billions to private companies who were unable to deliver.”
The UK has seen more than 130,000 people die with Covid-19 since the pandemic began and there were 12,000 excess non-Covid deaths last year, the BMA says.
Dr Nagpaul suggests that the so-called Freedom Day on July 19, when many restriction were eased, was a “gamble” that has since then contributed to almost 40,000 hospital admissions and more than 4,000 deaths.
Dr Nagpaul also has concerns about how far recently announced additional funding for the NHS and social care, as it continues to deal with the pandemic and a backlog of cases, will stretch.
The Government plans to raise £12 billion extra a year for the NHS and adult social care through a rise in national insurance next spring.
The NHS will get most of the share for the first three years, with £5.3 billion allocated to social care, £500 million of which will be spent on workforce training and recruitment.
Ministers say social care will get more money after this window as the £86,000 cap on costs, which will come into force in October 2023, starts to require funding.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “We have backed the health service at every turn, with an extra £29 billion to support health and care services on top of our historic settlement for the NHS in 2018.
“This will see the NHS budget rise by £33.9 billion by 2023/24.
“At the same time, we are backing the NHS with a further £36 billion for health and social care and a ring-fenced £8 billion to tackle backlogs and help the NHS deliver an extra nine million checks, scans and operations for patients across the country.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here