Mike's Columns in the Portsmouth News
Baffled at the Government's treatment of the NHS
It was a great pleasure to finally see Cdr Eddie Grenfell and the artic convoy veterans recently collect the first Artic Star emblems produced. It is just disappointing that it took the Government so long to award them. The Star is a great tribute to the immense tenacity by Eddie, his colleagues and their many supporters – particularly this newspaper – in their campaign to get it awarded. But it is, of course, sad that because it has taken so long that some veterans are no longer with us, to receive their Arctic Stars.
The Government should, of course, have listened and acted ages ago. But disappointingly they seem to have become increasingly out of touch with ordinary people.
Take the NHS. I welcomed the news a few years ago that they had finally come around to the Lib Dem way of thinking and were investing significantly more money into health. But I am baffled by the decision backed by the Government to restrict Alzheimer’s drugs on the NHS to moderate sufferers but not mild or severe ones. It’s not even that these are expensive drugs – just £2.50 a day and many sufferers have reported a significant improvement while taking the drugs.
And then again, the minister for the NHS in the South East is not interested when I raise the problems that Portsmouth will have if an A&E department in Chichester is closed. Meanwhile £7 million is to go from the local NHS that is within its budget to support other areas that have overspent. And they have failed to get to grips with the crisis in NHS dentistry. I have many constituents ring me up, baffled too as to why after paying their taxes their nearest NHS dentist is in Southampton or Bognor Regis.
But let’s not pretend it would be any better if the Tories were in power. Their first action according to their election manifesto written by David Cameron would have been to have taken £1 billion out of the NHS to give it as a subsidy to those that could already pay for private health care. And under the Tories, a slightly more severe winter than usual or a mild outbreak of ’flu saw the NHS in meltdown.
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