Thread by @danielgoyal

The government's £6bn NHS investment for waiting lists is...

...too little,
...too late,
and raises further concerns about the priorities of this government.

theguardian.com/society/2021/o…

Firstly, don't be fooled. Investment into waiting lists are unavoidable. The restricted access during the pandemic mean a catch-up initiative was always going to be needed.

The first question: would more decisive leadership have led to less restriction to care and less backlog?

The second: how much have the years of underinvestment in the NHS worsened the problem?

The waiting lists have been growing massively under this government prior to COVID.

[source BBC - chart is over 10 years]

This BBC article is from November 2019.

A&E targets not met since 2014
Cancer waiting targets not met since 2016
Routine care targets not met since 2016

bbc.co.uk/news/health-50…

The lack of investment in the UK's health system has been of epic proportions:

https://twitter.com/davidschneider/status/1452634915951071235?s=20

All this makes this support package too little, too late.

But there is an even more galling aspect to the announcement of the £6bn...

..it fails miserably to address the actual current needs of patients.

We have the highest A&E waiting list times, lowest bed capacity, lowest number of GPs per head, and the biggest staffing crisis our NHS has ever seen.

But this government's contribution is to give the vast majority of this £6bn to diagnostic equipment and technology...

Don't get me wrong, we desperately need more diagnostic equipment...and driving waiting lists down is essential. The suffering and shortened life-expectancy is tragic and entirely avoidable...but what the government is proposing is simply a repeat of the Test and Trace debacle..

public money that will not benefit the public.

Diagnostics are only useful if you have the professionals to report and act on the results.
Surgical hubs only work if you have the HDU, ICU, and Medical staff to manage the patients pre and post-op.
And GPs are the ones referring

Contrast this to Scotland's £1bn catch-up package (proportionally, double that of England's):

25% increase in primary care funding
£8 million to staff well-being
£23 million to urgent care
10% to mental health
And yes, £400m to driving down waiting lists through surgical hubs.

I don't think this is even enough, but priorities are a bit more in touch with reality.

Simply put: you cannot increase the number of procedures without correcting the damage caused by a decade of underfunding and NHS shrinkage.

I fear we are repeating the same 'mistakes' of the last two years... rhetoric with glam and glitter, but no actual plan or substance, and no benefit to the actual people who need it most.

We need the £6bn for the waiting lists. But it should be spent better.
We also need at least that amount to start repairing the damage done to frontline service provision - primary and urgent secondary care. And we need that NOW!

And as a fellow Twitter so clear put it - we must look after the staff that actually provide the service:

[ps if you don't follow @SallyMi83941850 you really should - sensible and compassionate]

https://twitter.com/SallyMi83941850/status/1452768331862249474?s=20

Because, going by the track record of current leadership and swell of populism, I am not sure we can handle any more brain drain...

and more respectful pastures are calling...

All in all, this package is a feeble attempt to cover up the catastrophic failure to invest in our health service and the utter debacle that was this government's pandemic response, IMO.

#SaveOurNHS
#SupportForUnity