- Conference
- 2023 National Delegate Conference
- Date
- 13 February 2023
- Decision
- Carried
Conference is appalled at the state of our NHS and social care services.
Conference believes that 13 years of Tory neglect have produced an unprecedented crisis which needs urgent attention.
Conference notes that waiting lists for treatment have reached their highest ever level, thousands of hours of ambulance crews’ time is lost each month due to delays in the system, and delayed discharges from hospital have massively increased, in large part due to the lack of social care capacity for those well enough to leave hospital.
Conference notes that while the problems differ across the four nations of the UK, all are beset by underfunding and staffing problems.
Indeed, Conference believes that one of the main causes of the current crisis is staff shortages, with both the NHS and social care experiencing record levels of unfilled vacancies of over a quarter of a million. No wonder there are too few beds, treatments and appointments. Conference blames the staffing shortfall on an absence of centrally-driven workforce planning since 2010, the lack of comprehensive workforce strategies for health and social care, and the failure to account for the loss of staff that has taken place since the Brexit vote.
Underlying all of this, Conference continues to denounce the austerity of the past decade as disastrously short-sighted. International comparisons show how far the NHS has been left lagging behind other OECD countries on a number of metrics. For example, France has more than double the UK’s number of beds per 1,000 people, and research shows that average health spending in the UK was 18% lower than the European average in the 2010s.
Conference is similarly appalled at the ongoing failure to produce an appropriately ambitious plan to transform social care. Action so far has been short-term and piecemeal, without the system overhaul that is required.
Conference is deeply concerned that the crisis is now directly reflected in the number of excess deaths, with Covid-19 no longer the main cause of death. In 2022 the UK had one of its highest levels in the past 50 years, with around 1,000 excess deaths per week.
Conference condemns those companies who are seeking to make money from this crisis – whether the private health firms bidding for more work as NHS waiting lists continue to grow or the cowboy operators who continue to profit in social care while their staff work for poverty pay.
Conference understands that 13 years of Coalition/Tory rule has devastated the NHS. This is why it is crucial that UNISON members expect an ambitious plan from Labour party for an incoming Labour government. UNISON expects Labour to make clear that it a) commits to the significant funding needed to increase both wages and staff numbers in the NHS and Social Care paid for by taxing the rich and b) makes clear that the privatisation and marketisation of both health and social care are more expensive to administer, less likely to deliver quality care as profits come before people, and should not form part of the solution to the NHS and Social Care current problems.
Conference therefore calls on the National Executive Council to:
1)Continue to demand vastly improved funding settlements for the NHS and social care;
2)Also continue to campaign for fully-funded, comprehensive workforce strategies for the NHS and social care as part of a wider plan to address the alarming gaps in the workforce;
3)Intensify the union’s demands for a National Care Service to bring greater consistency to social care delivery and to workforce terms and conditions;
4)Work with Labour Link to restate UNISON’s opposition to market mechanisms in healthcare, and the need to prioritise the rebuilding of the NHS rather than the expansion in use of the private sector;
5)Work with Labour Link to help the Labour health team to develop proposals for primary care which delivers improved and equitable access to patients and works with the health service group to deliver improved conditions for members working in GP practices;
6)With as wide a group of NHS and Social Care workers, users, campaigners, such as but not exclusively Keep Our NHS Public, politicians, community groups to organise a series of activities and events, such as national demonstrations, that highlight the issues raised in this motion.
