Stand up and demand proper funding for care

ROBERT Ball (“We need to future proof our hospitals’ needs”, November 2) and Tom Barker (“Will hospitals go downthe route of Javid?”, November 4) both point out in your letters page that our present government seems to care little about the lack of patient care not only in Leicester but throughout the country.

Have they forgotten that during the 2019 election campaign they repeated the promise originally made by Margaret Thatcher – “The NHS is safe with us”?

This is a government which, during the lockdown due to the pandemic, increased the defence budget but could not find enough money to offer NHS staff a decent pay rise.

After years of underfunding, £450 million was promised to University Hospitals of Leicester to reorganise the services for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

A plan, Building better hospitals for the future, was produced after a public consultation. The cost of this proposal will be rising daily and now the government is saying it will not even honour the original promise.

The hospitals in Leicester did not have sufficient bed capacity to cope in the winter before the pandemic so it is shocking, but not surprising, that patients in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland now have to wait longer for the most common hospital procedures.

So, I am asking the people of Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, together with all our elected representatives, to stand up for the NHS and our health workers and demand a publicly funded, publicly provided and accountable health and social care service.

To quote the poet Shelley: “We are many, they are few”.

Brenda Worrall, Leicester