LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Setting up NHS to fail is costing lives

It will come as a massive shock for Alexander to find out the politicians responsible for running the NHS for the last 12 years have been Conservative health ministers; in 2010 the number of patients on waiting lists for hospital treatment was under four million, today it is over seven million and rising.

He could have also highlighted that every key NHS performance indicator since 2010, eg time to cancer treatment etc, has deteriorated to the point that patients find themselves on ever-growing waiting lists for surgery.

This Tory government’s track record of running the NHS is one of deliberately setting the service up to fail, undermining public confidence in doctors, nurses and paramedics and preparing the ground for an American-style healthcare system. An article in the Conservative-leaning Times newspaper floated the idea that patients could be charged £50 to see their GP, and if you think that won’t happen, try registering with a dentist as a new NHS patient.

The Advertiser recently reported that a Rotherham pensioner following a fall had to wait hours for an emergency ambulance to take her to hospital; the incident is one of the scores of similar cases across England and is a shocking indictment of this Tory government’s appalling mismanagement of the NHS.

The government is trying to deflect blame for the NHS crisis on Putin, flu and Covid — it isn’t. This crisis is the result of the engineered, deliberate destruction of a once great national health service. It’s been 12 years in the making from successive Tory governments and the consequences for patients are life-taking.

Noel Wade, Rother Valley