HEALTH SERVICES

Is the £26 billion allocation to build up in-house capacity to improve clinical outcomes? Is there a plan to bring home care services back into the public sector? The unmet need for home care services is running at about 50% in some Trust areas. There is an urgent need to change the home care service, which is currently a major factor contributing to a catastrophic log jam affecting bed occupancy and hospital discharges. Ambulance handovers have also been affected by the logjam, and the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service has acknowledged that this affects clinical outcomes and puts patients at risk if medical treatment is not delivered within the “golden hour” to avoid life-threatening clinical outcomes. This is all part of the low pay economy and poor employment terms and conditions of service which restrict recruiting and keeping staff.

It is clear that these services need to be brought back into the public health and social care system, if the crisis in health services is to be tackled.

The health budget for 2026 is already in deficit. Is the £495m for waiting lists going to be used to build in-house capacity, or is it another gift to the private sector, who have received over £300m in the previous five years and we still have the worst waiting lists in the UK, so clearly the preference for using the private sector cannot deliver the best clinical outcomes? The private sector cherry-picks the easiest and most profitable cases and leaves the more serious and expensive clinical work to the public sector. They have no interest in a commitment to tackling health inequalities because this needs long-term medical intervention and treatments, so are therefore, considered unprofitable by these private health care monopolies, who see illness and vulnerability as a source of massive profits. The Workers Party believes that the citizens of Northern Ireland are being conditioned to accept that paying for medical treatment is the new normal.