LETTER: NHS services are being restricted, not improved

We have been very well and compassionately served. We greatly appreciate what a public service does.

We are appalled at the damage which is planned for the NHS. We attended the public consultation, ‘Better Care: Closer to Home’, NHS meeting. I read the public relations guff they gave us.

It was beautifully presented — 17 glossy pages showing us how it will ‘improve’ the services. The fine print is given just three lines, admitting that ‘restricted budgets’ have forced it on them. These restricted budgets are their share of the £20billion which the government is taking out of our health service. It is an outrage.

These ‘improvements’ consist of closing two hospitals and downgrading a third. Some of the plans could be of benefit, but not while every other essential service is being cut as well. The reality is that all our services are being cut: home helps slashed, buses time-tabled back, pensions deferred, benefits cut, etc. Every government policy change is another attack on working class people.

The NHS is being starved of resources. It is being cut while private companies rush in. Our services are being restricted, forcing us to go private, the way dentistry has.

There is no ‘golden pot’ we are told, austerity is our lot.

Rubbish. Governments decide priorities – they legislate to cover up the billions of pounds’ worth of tax evasion. It has been decided to spend billions on Trident missiles of mass destruction. Billions in taxpayers’ money has been poured into rescuing their mates’ banks.

This ‘Better Care Closer to Home’ initiative, like the earlier Clinical Commission Groups and the latest, ‘Sustainability And Transformation Plans’ are endless meaningless words, all implying that something good is being done. 
In reality, in my view they each disguise the fact that the welfare state is being dismantled before our eyes. 
Wake up Britain. Our welfare state, once the envy of the world, is being destroyed.

J. W. R. Clark

Old Tupton, Chesterfield