Your report on the cancellation of plans for additional dental surgeries in Spalding (front page, January 10), records that John Hayes will be ‘pushing the NHS for answers’ and suggesting that the NHS should give incentives to dentists to come here as the need is so desperate.
He has always been a solid supporter of his party, which in 2010 inherited an NHS that was performing well and was virtually fully staffed. The government he supports and has been a part of, has spent most of the past eight years in running the NHS down, so that it is now short of tens of thousands of doctors and nurses, with staff under great pressure and waiting times stretching ever longer. The Tory governments of the 1980s and 90s followed the same pattern.
Police and local government have suffered similar treatment, leaving the one unable to cover its full range of nominal responsibilities and the other having to make severe cutbacks in services, including maintenance of the public estate, care of the elderly, etc.
Jacob Rees-Mogg recently advocated a reduction in taxes to facilitate the survival of the British economy if the UK were to leave the EU without a deal. But it is taxes which pay for our public services, NHS and all. Further reduction of taxes, would mean still more pressure on public services, including the NHS. One can only assume that the Rees-Mogg tendency would lead to privatisation of the service – ok, if you can afford to pay.
(And don’t fall for the one about paying for the NHS out of money saved by our exit from the EU.)
A large part of the £350m a week contribution to the EU, much and misleadingly advertised at the time of the referendum, came back to Britain anyway, in the form of university and regional grants, farming subsidies, etc. And the sharp decline in the value of the pound after the referendum has already reduced the national economy and used up in advance any savings we might otherwise have thought possible.)
John Tippler
Spalding
