UK's Labor Party chief demands May's response to crises at NHS
The UK’s opposition Labor Party leader has demanded answers from Prime Minister Theresa May after the British Red Cross warned the country’s National Health Service (NHS) faces a humanitarian crisis.
Referring to the situation as “a national scandal,” Jeremy Corbyn called on Britain’s chief executive on Saturday to attend a parliamentary session on Monday to respond to the controversy and explain how she plans to deal with the issue.
Corbyn said May must go before the Commons to “set out to the British people how she plans to fix her failure on the NHS”.
The development came after the British Red Cross, which has been providing help to dozens of overstretched hospitals across the country, said the situation affecting the NHS in England was a “humanitarian crisis.”
This is while NHS England figures point to record levels of cancelled routine operations and “intolerable strain” being exerted on acute services, according to local press reports, which further entail emerging evidence of patients dying because of long waits for care, chronic shortages of beds and lack of professional staff.
Whitehall officials, however, stated that May, who is planning a major speech on Monday on mental health, had no plan to go to the Commons, prompting former Liberal Democratic Health Minister Norman Lamb to slam the prime minister’s refusal to address the issue before MPs as unacceptable.
“The situation is deteriorating. It is not sustainable. The government has a responsibility to be held to account,” Lamb said.
Meanwhile, leading figures working in the NHS and social care, along with the Conservative-controlled Local Government Association, have been warning for months that the failure to provide sufficient services at home and in the community for those requiring social care has added to pressure on hospital beds with disastrous knock-on impact for other patients requiring acute or routine treatment.
The British Red Cross insist that the looming humanitarian crisis at the NHS is due to budget cuts imposed by the government.
According to press reports, nearly one-third of England’s 152 NHS hospitals were forced to scale back the level of their services last month because they were not able to cope with the number of patients.
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