Opinion: Realising the value of our NHS

As a local representative I have been in touch with residents all over the city on matters related to the Middle East and I extend my heartfelt support to all communities at this time. I offer my prayers to everyone suffering and involved.

Nothing more could have bought home to me, the value of the NHS than my own experience last week with my brother. Two months ago, he showed me a lump on his back. I offered a prod and said it was nothing to worry about.

After experiencing pain, he visited his own GP who ordered a scan and was called within a week to operate and remove a mass that looked suspicious. He was cared for by NHS admin staff and porters, NHS Nurses, NHS HCAs, NHS Doctors and NHS Consultants who demonstrated just how great the institution of our NHS is and why the need to preserve it is so important.

With more than 80,000 people on waiting lists to start treatment at local hospitals, this is an issue that affects families right across Peterborough and the country. Nearly half of us say a close friend or family member has struggled to get a GP appointment in the last six months.

So, at the Labour conference last week, Wes Streeting MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Health, set out more details for how we could start to fix the NHS.

The priority for Labour will be immediate action to cut waiting lists. We’ll provide an extra £1.1 billion to help the NHS beat the backlog, with extra clinics at evenings and weekends. This will be done in partnership with NHS staff – a refreshing change from the battle the Tories seem to always want to pick with frontline staff – meaning faster treatment for patients, two million more appointment each year, and fair pay for staff.

This will be the first step to cut waiting lists and beat the Tory backlog, and will be paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status, because patients need treatment more than the wealthiest need a tax break.

We’ve also got to deal with the immediate crisis in NHS dentistry.

Peterborough is a desert when it comes to finding an NHS dentist and we have some of the poorest teeth in the country.

Labour will deliver 700,000 extra appointments each year, get more dentists into the communities that need them most, and make sure that everyone who needs an NHS dentist can get one.

Labour’s vision is “reforming” the NHS, the likes of which has never been seen since its inception. But a reform that is so necessary as lives are being lost and a crisis where 7.7 million people are on waiting lists calls for nothing else but radical change and to put the health of the British people and our country, first.

My brother was one of the lucky ones. Yet, the reality of so many millions more is something we carry every day.