Cllr Jim Dickson – Cabinet Member for Healthier Communities
Today, the 75th birthday of our treasured NHS, should be an occasion of joy and celebration. And it is certainly a day when we give thanks for the amazing national institution that has done so much to remove fear from the prospect of accessing health, and sever the connection between illness and destitution that is the grim spectre which hangs over people in market-based health systems. Nye Bevan did indeed transform our country into one in which ‘Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune the cost of which should be shared by the community’.
But it’s also a birthday tinged with regret that the much loved 75 year old has been allowed to become frail and incapacitated and is itself in need of urgent treatment. In 13 unlucky years, the service has degenerated under our current government from one which when Labour left office in 2010, had the lowest waiting lists and highest satisfaction levels in modern times. Patients in need of urgent care now experience an NHS in which they often face waits of an hour (or more) for an ambulance, followed by 4hr plus delays in A&E. Elective care waits for clinical treatment are often over a year and can be as much as two years. Our heroic NHS workforce – lauded by politicians and clapped by the public during the pandemic – now see their standard of living eroded by shamefully low pay offers and their morale damaged by understaffing.
Even in our part of London – where we are lucky enough to have world leading hospital trusts (including Guys & St Thomas, Kings, and South London and Maudsley) staffed by some of the best clinical and non-clinical teams in the world and amazing primary care staff – the figures are grim. Nearly a quarter of a million people are waiting for an operation across South-East London and nearly a third of those waiting in A&E are not seen within 4 hours. Government failure to settle pay disputes with both senior and junior hospital doctors means the prospect of waiting lists coming down quickly from the current 7 million nationally are remote. A heart breaking conversation last week in Herne Hill with a constituent who had been forced to spend most of her savings on a hip replacement to free herself from pain and disability, was a stark reminder for me of the human cost of a failing NHS.
In Lambeth we need a new government to begin the task of invest in improving our NHS, recruiting the staff we need and investing in new health technologies. But we recognise that we are not an equal borough. We have faced exceptionally challenging times in recent years – significant cuts to public services, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the ongoing cost of living crisis. The impacts are not felt equally, and poverty, racism and inequality have worsened health outcomes for many in our community.
We must rise to these challenges and be bold in our actions to overcome them – not be afraid to do things differently to support our residents, patients, partners, carers and staff. We can do better by working together in partnership to transform how we support our patients, carers, and residents. Through our Council-NHS-Community partnership Lambeth Together, and our innovative Delivery Alliances, we are working to improve health and care outcomes by building on our already strong relationships, integrating health and care services, and developing programmes of work to address all health and care activity in Lambeth. Our Health and Wellbeing Bus, which takes clinical staff around our borough delivering key public health interventions including blood pressure and mental health checks in places people have problems accessing the health system, and the work of our partners the AT Beacon project, who deliver the same in barbers and churches, demonstrate what is possible. The great work of our partners to address the physical and mental health needs of Sanctuary Seekers and those who are homeless makes clear that everyone deserves the best.
Our focus as a health and care system will be on tackling unfair and avoidable differences in health between different groups of people. To do this, we must support people to lead healthier lives. We must do more to prevent ill health, and provide support earlier if people become unwell. People must have access to a positive experience of health and care services that they trust, and that meet their needs. We are committed to improving the lives of every Lambeth resident, without leaving anyone behind. In this way our local NHS can rise to its original vision of providing high quality care that is free for all.