General Election Party Election Broadcasts: Labour

This government has decided to impose austerity on health care,

and for seven years now,

the NHS has been underfunded by over 3% per year.

So since 2010, the NHS is now over 20% underfunded,

and by 2020, the plan is

that it would be actually over 30% underfunded.

The stresses are now showing, with the worst A&E waits for ten years,

cancer waits going up,

elective waiting lists are nearly four million

and projected to be five million in a year's time.

It is just dangerous now.

84% of my colleagues in a survey last year said

that their ability to provide safe patient care

was undermined by their workload.

We end up in one of the biggest children's hospitals

in the UK and in Europe having no beds at all

for children who are in A&E.

We had the Red Cross in January 2017 in England

declaring that the NHS was a humanitarian crisis.

Theresa May stood up and said there's nothing wrong.

Jeremy Hunt stood up and said nothing's going on.

It is a lie.

I think the underfunding of the NHS is a deliberate policy,

and I think it goes hand in hand

with the agenda to privatise the NHS.

Already, the majority of NHS contracts being awarded

are going to the private sector.

Already, we're spending more and more public money

on the private sector.

Whatever it is you believe in,

whether it's education, NHS,

you need to believe that these are going to go.

Privatisation is about making money.

That's what the NHS is going to be about.

This election is life and death for the National Health Service.

I think it's actually at a precipice,

and if we can remove the current government,

with its attitude of contempt

and lack of respect for the health service,

and replace it with a government

that believes once again in health care as a public service,

we will have done our children proud.

Look at the pictures that we've seen of people on trolleys in A&E,

waiting to be seen or waiting to be admitted,

the picture in January of a two-year-old child

waiting for five hours, who may have meningitis,

but five hours for an assessment to know whether they're ill or not,

and lying on a home-made couch,

lying on two chairs in their A&E until they were seen.

Remember those images and think, "Is this good enough?"

And actually, please do not vote Conservative.

As a paediatrician, the thing that hurts me most is the story such as

a child with severe mental health problems needing admission

in England, and the nearest hospital bed was in Scotland.

And the parents had a 400-mile round trip to see their ill child.

I've seen...

< It's OK.

< It's OK, it's OK.

We know we live in a land with riches for all.

We know the health visitor and firefighter contribute no less

than the stockbroker and merchant banker.

We know there is no chief executive or shareholder value

without the worker.

We know that wealth, privilege and power

are carved up in an obscene fashion.

We have had enough.

We demand health, work, home,

education and care in time of need, not subject to grand profiteering,

but planned, transparent, executed in efficient fashion

under democratic control, using our intelligence and imagination.

We demand the full fruits of our labour.

We demand the right to contribute

and recognise the obligation to share.

Power concedes nothing without demand.

It never did and it never will.

We have one short, precious life.

We demand the chance to be all that we can.