Public Health and the NHS

The BNP believes in a free, fully funded National Health Service for all British citizens and the right to care and nurture for all sections of our national community.

The biggest problem facing the NHS today is underfunding, particularly for front line staff.

Salaries paid for these essential services are too low and, as a result, skilled British medical personnel are forced to seek employment elsewhere.

The BNP will squash the NHS deficit by halting the £9.1 billion foreign aid budget and reallocating money to the NHS. This will end all shortfalls and allow an increase in salary levels which will once again attract British people to the service.

The BNP opposes the trend to ‘talk-down’ the NHS, even though the Tory/Labour underfunding problem has put it in a worse position than many of its European rival services.

The BNP believes there has been a deliberate policy to underfund and then denigrate the NHS in order to set the stage for the privatisation ‘option’ to appear inevitable.

This is a problem which can easily be solved through the budgetary reallocation outlined above.

We suspect the impetus behind partial privatisation of the NHS is the submission to the requirements of the World Trade Organisation, whereby signatories must ensure a level economic playing field and remove all labour subsidies.

Many of the social welfare provisions won for the working class by social democratic parties in the last century — state-funded healthcare in particular — fall foul of this agreement.

The corporations which move into such potentially lucrative ‘markets’ are not interested in patient care; they are interested in profit.

PFI schemes have saddled the NHS with enormous costs and we shall institute a review of these schemes, as discussed elsewhere in this document.

We submit that treating illness or injury is not an area that can either morally or economically be overseen for profit.

Organisational Reforms

“How hard is it to keep a hospital clean?”

Very hard it seems, since the last Tory government replaced ward-based staff cleaners with contract cleaning staff and the Blair/Brown regime continued the same system.

The BNP will combat MRSA by replacing contract cleaners with ward-based auxiliaries and returning to in-hospital laundries for all staff uniforms.

In addition, the BNP firmly believes that a return to traditional British staffing levels will help to alleviate the “superbug” problems which have accompanied the rise in non-British staffing levels.

In this regard, we refer to the recent shocking revelation from the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, where employees from 70 countries were found working. Many are from some of the most backward nations on earth, and have such a poor command of English that they are unable to have the most basic conversation — yet are employed in all manner of roles, including cleaners and porters. This is a recipe for disaster, and the BNP will halt it.

We shall ensure that Britain has an effective, sustainable, free National Health Service. We shall:

– Oppose plans to scrap local hospitals in favour of giant, impersonal factory-type hospitals that are distant and remote to relatives.

– Ensure that health is assessed on the grounds of patient need, not bureaucratic targets.

– Ensure that front line staff numbers are boosted and unnecessary bureaucracy slashed.

– End the scandal of foreign ‘health tourism’, which costs the exchequer over £2 billion per annum, often to treat Third World diseases. We shall also end immigration, which places an additional cumbersome burden on the NHS, at the expense of our own people.

– Restrict the pay of NHS bureaucrats, for the most part, to £100,000 per annum.

– Encourage the re-employment of staff with school-age children during term-time, designed to clear backlogs of minor operations.

– Terminate the recruitment for employment of doctors and nurses from the developing world where their skills are urgently in demand.

– Place emphasis on healthy living and healthy diets through the reintroduction of traditional school meals, rich in vegetables and fibre. A similar scheme, introduced in Finland some years ago, significantly improved the health of the population and much reduced the burden on that country’s health system.

We shall further ensure that, whenever possible, hospitals purchase locally produced food, which will be fresher and healthier. This will assist local business and strengthen the links between hospitals and their communities.

– Introduce a public health awareness campaign on the dangers high-risk, unsafe sex, aimed at combating AIDS and HIV.

– Support the nursing unions’ campaign for zero tolerance for violence.

– We shall introduce democracy to the current NHS boards, to which a proportion of health care professionals will be elected at the time of local elections.

– We shall consult widely with charitable organisations specialising in patient care, with a view to empowering them to increase their role, in partnership with the NHS. Where these prove workable, we shall extend them into other areas, with a view to increasing efficiency.

– We shall restore to hospitals the authority of the traditional matron, with special authority over hygiene. This, we anticipate, will reduce bureaucracy.

– We shall increase the number of dentists available on the NHS. In recent years the demand for such service has risen due to immigration.