RCN fears for services as Government axe 10,000 from NHS

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has warned the public that services are under great strain because cuts in Government funding have led to 10,000 staff being made redundant over the last three years. The figures for redundancies were released by the Department of Health, which admitted that 2,394 “full-time equivalent” NHS staff were made redundant in the last financial year – 350 of whom were from London. This brings the total number of redundancies over the last three years to 10,000 across the country as a whole.

This massive level of redundancies will see the Government losing out on tax receipts – both in terms of income tax and flat rate taxes such as VAT, as redundant staff cut back on spending – and on National Insurance contributions. The Government will also be having to pay out welfare benefits and housing benefit to most of those made redundant. Any saving to the public purse will be marginal.

In North East London, nearly one in five members of community health staff have gone, mostly through redundancy, in the last 12 months alone. Government reorganisation of the NHS saw Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities being shut down last April: since then, 69 community health staff have been made redundant in the North East London area.

The RCN has expressed fears that front line services will suffer as a result of these cuts, as the reduced number of community health staff cannot cover larger workloads to make up for the redundancies. Waiting times are bound to increase and levels of care will suffer. The RCN has even warned that lives may be lost: is this a price worth paying to cut out another 10,000 staff in the drive to austerity?

•A new report from the British Medical Association (BMA) claims that the UK is not performing as well as it should on “child wellbeing” – and it claims that the Government’s welfare benefits policy is set to make matters worse.  Figures show that although child wellbeing has improved since 1999, current government policies are set to see that progress reversed.

UNICEF has a league table of child wellbeing: the UK has not done well, coming at the bottom of the list of 21 wealthy countries in 2007 and only moving up to 16th out of the 29 wealthy countries in the latest list. Data reflecting the situation since the 2010 General Election will influence the next list: and it is this which is causing fears that the UK performance will drop again.

Professor Averil Mansfield, Chair of the BMA’s Board of Science, said, “The BMA is particularly concerned that any improvements in tackling child poverty are in danger of being eroded by some government welfare policies.”

The report also points out that it is often more effective to invest money in stopping problems developing rather than waiting till you have to shell out to deal with the consequences. It has been estimated that every £1 spent on early intervention programmes for children and families will save £10.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, Director of Professional Activities at the BMA, said, “Since the BMA published Growing Up In Britain in 1999, there have been improvements and these need to be acknowledged.   […] However, we need to do more as we are failing our most vulnerable children. It is essential that we develop integrated policies where child welfare is central.”

Growing Up In The UK is available from the BMA, http://bma.org.uk.