Mike's Columns in the Portsmouth News
"Slow Coach" Labour
A real problem that has developed with the current Labour Government is that it often does too little, too late. They took an age, for example, to decide what to do on Northern Rock while its customers faced massive uncertainty. And it is now doing too little, too late, on the housing crisis. There are 1.7 million people on housing waiting lists nationwide. And we also hear this week of private house builders sacking their workers and having many houses left unsold. So you would think the Government could put the two together and give councils and housing associations more money and more freedom to buy houses - thus solving two problems at once. But what it is doing is a mere drop in the ocean compared to what needs to be done.
And we are also unfortunately seeing too many tragic incidents of knife crime. The Government needs therefore to look at harsher sentences for those carrying and using knives and it needs to bring together the police, schools, local councils and other agencies to really tackle the problem.
This month see the 60th anniversary of the NHS. It is perhaps a miracle it survived the Tory Government of the 1980s and 90s. For example, they cancelled 50,000 operations in one year alone and patients were turfed out of their beds in the middle of the night to make way for more urgent cases. Under the Conservatives, if there was even a minor ’flu outbreak, hospitals went into meltdown. But even so, Labour were slow to invest more money in the NHS when they came to power in 1997, despite repeated urging from the Lib Dems.
And there are still aspects of the NHS where it is acting too slowly. We still need a big increase in NHS dentistry. We need urgent action to eradicate superbugs from our hospitals and stop unnecessary deaths. And above all we need to speed up approving new drugs and treatments for use in the NHS. In short, our slow coach ministers need to buck up or they will be shipped out by the electorate.
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