Readers' letters - February 1

We have recently had a ridiculous suggestion from back bench Tory MP Edward Leigh where he suggested that people should be charged to see their GP.

It is remarkable but not unexpected that the Tory front bench was not prepared to dismiss this outrageous suggestion in regard to charging people to use their GP services.

It is only a suggestion but we have before us a true picture of Tory Party ideology in regard to the future of our NHS.

The Tories are placing the future of the NHS, and well being of people who use the NHS, in doubt because they are failing to understand the issues that are currently impacting on NHS services. We are not getting any constructive ways forward by the Secretary of State.

It is clear that our NHS staff in accident and emergency departments are currently working under severe pressure, as well as our paramedics who work under great pressure to save lives due to the ongoing cuts by this Government to the NHS.

We are hearing stories of people waiting in the back of ambulances because accident and emergency departments are full and, on many occasions, we have people waiting longer than four hours before being admitted into a ward in some parts of the country.

This situation impacts on paramedics being unable to get back out on the road to respond to serious 999 calls.

Waiting lists have increased and are getting bigger under the watch of this Government.

The good people of this country were guaranteed an extra £350m a week for the NHS during the referendum campaign among many things promised.

I would like to ask where that investment is?

David Whitaker

via email

poverty

Things have to change

Outside of London and the South East – the centre of the known universe – where productivity is 79 per cent above average and they have never had it so good, the rest of Britain – with productivity down to 19 per cent below average in some regions – is rapidly becoming a Third World country.

We have record numbers of people relying on food banks (one million packages given out last year), child poverty escalating (3.9 million kids in 2015), wages plummeting (“real wages [fallen by 10 per cent since 2008 outside London] and family living standards in the UK have suffered to an extent unprecedented in modern history” London of School of Economics), and now the NHS relying on the Red Cross charity to cope.

Thatcher decimated regional manufacturing and other industries (70 per cent 
gone since her catastrophic reign), centralising and relying on finance in the capital where bankers have given themselves over a billion pounds in bonuses since the global crisis
they created with their insatiable greed and unethical dealings.

The Conservative ethos and drive to make the rich richer so the wealth can filter down does not work.

We all know it goes into 
tax havens and luxury lifestyles.

Cameron and Osborne’s austerity measures hammering the poorest 
and most vulnerable in society, while giving tax breaks to the highest earners and most wealthy, does not work.

Fat cat directors in this country earned more in the first four days of 2017 than the rest of us will make in the full year.

Things have got to change – soon.

Ian Hughes

Address supplied