Simon Jenkins suggests putting the NHS on a wartime footing (This NHS crisis is historic – a war footing is the only way to deal with it, 2 January). I’d say yes to that if it were to result in something similar to the hikes in salaries for nurses during the second world war under the Rushcliffe Committee.
But I reject Jenkins’ big hypothetical “if this is like the pandemic of 2020 then we should treat it as such. And perhaps this time we might learn from our mistakes”. The tragic fact is we have had ample time to learn from our mistakes, but instead of fixing things the government has been consumed by its own self-combustive psychodramas, to the detriment of its public duty.
We have no workforce plan; no reserve capacity for beds and staff; funding closer to Slovakia’s level than that of Switzerland; and a reliance on internationally recruited nurses and temporary staff, funnelling huge sums of public money into private agencies to fill gaps. Yes, this NHS crisis is historic – historic vacancies of almost 50,000 nurses missing in action and pay stagnation.
Jenkins contends that “the decision of nurses to go on strike at such a moment [is] unwise”. But what else can nurses do to prod the government out of its paralysis and help it learn to talk? As for his suggestion of a parliamentary coalition, that could be interesting, but who would play Churchill? We know who would love to, but that could be even more divisive and dangerous.
Prof Anne Marie Rafferty
King’s College London; former president, Royal College of Nursing
• While I agree with much of the sentiment in Simon Jenkins’ article, he is wrong to claim that, after the Labour government under Tony Blair increase spending on the NHS, its policies “starkly failed to deliver”. This statement would not be recognised by many of us who have worked in the NHS. The Blair-Brown government made a very real difference to those of us working on the frontline and hence to our patients. The two-week wait initiative and guaranteed waiting times for procedures are two good examples. These gains have since been deliberately eroded by Conservative-led administrations.
As for his suggestion that retired doctors and nurses “must be pleaded with, summoned and if necessary bribed back to work”, the reality is that those of us who have had a break from work for whatever reason and wish to return, would face such a bureaucratic mountain to climb that they would probably fall at the first hurdle, as I have recently experienced.
Dr Ross Martin
Egmanton, Nottinghamshire
• Simon Jenkins’ suggestion to offload ambulance patients to church halls staffed with trained volunteers is utter nonsense.
Here is yet another pundit who draws the conclusion that the NHS does not work and that it is a bad time for staff to strike. I am a paramedic who has spent an entire shift outside a hospital with just one patient because the hospital had over 100 patients waiting to be discharged with nowhere to go. I have been in the job long enough to remember when we had council-run care homes for those patients to go to, and it was my job to take them there. It’s a much easier fix than we are led to believe by the people who want it broke, so that their chums in private healthcare can swoop in and make a killing.
Mandhir Uppal
Paramedic, Toxteth ambulance station, Liverpool
