Yvette Cooper MP: We need to start rebuilding our NHS

Yvette Cooper MP writes: After more than a decade of Conservative austerity and mismanagement, our precious NHS is now in a desperate state. A&E in Pinderfields is under huge strain. I’ve stood outside counting queuing ambulances, knowing it means those paramedics can’t get back to answer other 999 calls. Across the country people needing urgent care are waiting for hours and hours on end.In many of our Five Towns GP surgeries things are so pressured that the only way to get an appointment is to queue on the phone at 8am. Every month over 8,000 local people wait more than a fortnight just to see a GP. Yet when they give up trying or can’t get symptoms checked, often that means conditions get worse.This wasn’t all caused by Covid. Even before the pandemic waiting times had shot up and we had huge staff shortages with 100,000 unfilled vacancies in our NHS and 112,000 vacancies in social care.

At the heart of our NHS are brilliant, caring and dedicated staff, but they are so overstretched. I’ve spoken to frontline workers who tell me how heartbreaking it is to work shift after shift under this kind of pressure. The stress it causes, the impact on mental health. The porters and ward orderlies, the nurses, doctors, consultants and paramedics – they’re all true heroes.Far from solving these problems, the government is making things worse. They aren’t training the additional staff we need. Unbelievably, ministers actually cut the number of medical training places last year. Even worse, they’ve gone from clapping key workers to sacking them. Instead of sitting down with nurses to talk about pay and conditions, they are changing the law so they can just sack them if they get involved in industrial disputes. It is a total disgrace and Labour has pledged to reverse this new damaging law.

Now Conservative MPs are calling for patients to be charged for doctor or hospital appointments. What planet are they on? Aren’t things hard enough? The founding principle of the NHS is that people get care based on their need, not their ability to pay. Labour will always fight to defend that.Patients and NHS staff desperately need and deserve a proper serious plan to turn things round. We remember how much better our NHS used to be and we need to start rebuilding it.

At its heart that must mean training and investing in far more doctors and nurses. Labour is proposing to double the number of medical school training places and train thousands more nurses. And we would pay for it by abolishing the unfair non-doms tax loophole for the richest people in the country. If you live here, you should pay your taxes here.People across our towns are right to expect more from the NHS. We deserve better than this. Change can’t come soon enough.