Letters: Who will run a 24/7 NHS?

These letters appear in the 15th January 2015 edition of The Independent

Junior doctors have a message for Jeremy Hunt

Jeremy Hunt’s argument about junior doctors’ hours relies on a supposed excess mortality of patients admitted at weekends. Yet even the egregious Bruce Keogh admits that the figures do not show cause and effect. Nor do doctors work in isolation. If Hunt wants a seven-day NHS he will have to stump up a lot of cash for a full support staff: radiography, pathology, operating-theatre service, ward clerks, receptionists, porters, cleaners and so on.

He must also ensure that much maligned “managers” are present in order to co-ordinate activities. In addition, pharmacists, secretarial staff, therapists (why should a stroke patient miss out on Saturday and Sunday?) will all be needed.

Dr D J Walker (retired)

Macclesfield, Cheshire

Jeremy Hunt is reported as saying that a junior doctor’s pay “can be up to four times the normal rate, providing a perverse incentive for them to work excessive hours”.

This is a typically disingenuous statement from a PR man. As he is well aware, junior doctors do not decide to work excessive hours: the Trust employing them requests them to work extra hours, and the higher rate is in fact a disincentive for the Trust to make such requests.

Furthermore he keeps referring to statistics showing higher death rates at weekends. This is indeed true, but Hunt then states that this is caused by doctors not working weekends.

I submit that the statistics do not demonstrate any such correlation. In fact I am told that they show the highest death rates occur on Fridays when junior doctors are working. I believe that this applies to other countries too, not just the UK.

L Andrews

Northwich, Cheshire

Steve Richards (12 January) suggests that “Hunt must prevail” citing a similar level of healthcare in other European countries. That may be so, with one vital difference; European healthcare is adequately funded, unlike the Tory version.

The fact is that this government would sooner pay money to private providers than fund the NHS adequately. They expect doctors to work longer hours for, in effect, less money, while MPs continue to swig taxpayer-funded subsidised drinks in the members’ bars. They continue to cite austerity as the only solution to our debt, while large corporations and the super-rich practise massive tax avoidance.

No other European government is so ideologically driven; that’s the main difference.

Alan Gent

Cheadle, Cheshire

The NHS finds itself between a rock and a hard place: the Government’s promise to provide a seven-day service by 2020 to eliminate the perceived weekend inadequacies on the one hand, and insufficient staff of all sorts to provide it in the timescale.

But wait! If Jeremy Hunt can stretch what we now have over seven days, then soon Monday to Friday will be as “unsafe” as the weekends are alleged to be now. Parity achieved! Standing ovation at party conference.

Kevin Donnelly

St Ives, Cambridgeshire

In accordance with standard ministerial procedure, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has called the junior doctors’ strike “completely unnecessary”.

Could any reader supply details of a single occasion when the government in general and the Conservative Party in particular has not denounced industrial action as completely unnecessary?

Robert Bottamley

Hedon, East Yorkshire

Lose weight. Drink less. Trust your doctor. Unless your name is Hunt. Then you ignore 55,000 medical opinions about health.

Michael Morse

Harrogate

The Welsh way with water

While Ofwat struggles to regulate rip-off privatised water companies (report, 13 January), bill-payers in Wales are more likely to receive a cheque in the form of a “customer dividend” than a price increase. That is because since 2000, Glas Cymru (Welsh Water) has been owned by its customers and run on a not-for-profit basis.

Since returning to social ownership following a failed experiment in privatisation in the 1990s, Welsh Water has reinvested £3bn in infrastructure at no cost to taxpayers.

On average, Welsh water bills have fallen in real terms since 2000, while £150m has been returned directly to customers in the form of dividends. Disadvantaged customer groups have also enjoyed an additional £10m in support via social tariffs.

Consumers in the rest of the UK deserve the same opportunity to benefit from utilities run for people, not profit.

Claire McCarthy

General Secretary

The Co-operative Party

London EC1

Your story about water bills (13 January) does not do justice to the good work for customers achieved and planned by water companies.

The sector needs to be judged not only by a full picture of what happened in the regulatory period examined by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), but also by what they have committed to do in the next five years.

The independent consumer body, CCWater, identified that water companies had provided over £1bn of additional benefits between 2009 and 2014, including additional investment into the areas which matter most to customers, such as reducing the risk of sewer flooding, improving resilience and reducing leakage.

Over the next five years customers will see sustained high investment to improve services alongside a 5 per cent average drop in prices. At the same time one million more people will be helped to pay their water bills.

In considering the PAC’s findings, Government and Ofwat need to avoid acting in ways which might undermine the confidence of investors who have underpinned the improved level of service delivered by water companies in the last 25 years.

Michael Roberts

Chief Executive, Water UK

London SW1

I must take Roger Earp (Letters, 14 January) to task concerning his assumption that the surpluses made by the private water companies are retained in the economy. The majority of water companies are foreign-owned. Indeed my local company, Bristol Water, is partly owned by a Canadian company, Capstone Infrastructure, whose annual report notes that “the inherent value of this water system and its long-term growth profile make it a compelling investment regardless of short-termregulatory challenges”.

Ken Simmons

Bristol

Harold Wilson’s holiday habits

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a foible as “a weak point, failing or moral weakness.”

As those of us who visit regularly know, the Scillies are glorious: fabulous beaches, widely varied landscapes in a small area, fascinating flora and fauna, wonderful walking, safe environment.

Harold and Mary Wilson showed the best possible taste in choosing to holiday there (“Mary Wilson, the Prime Minister’s wife who preferred the quiet life,” 9 January). Hardly a foible.

Glynne Williams

London E17

Labour infighting won’t win elections

The assertion by some of the Labour MPs that a move back to the centre ground will make them “electable” is utterly risible and also demonstrates short-term memory loss – have they really forgotten what happened at the 2015 general election? Moving back to Blairite policies will not gain them one extra vote in Scotland, while the haemorrhaging of votes to Ukip would continue unabated in their heartlands in northern England.

What then does “electable” mean? The answer to this is a damning indictment of our voting system, whereby a very small minority of Middle England voters in marginal constituencies must be appeased. The Labour MPs would be better fighting for a more representative electoral system, so they can be true to their principles, the Labour members and the voting public at large, rather than turning on the mandated leader for little besides self-interest.

Jon Fyne

Sheffield

It is not Jeremy Corbyn, as leader of the Labour Party, who will prevent people from voting for them, but the behaviour of the party as a whole. They currently look like an unruly rabble, full of egocentrics putting themselves before the good of the party and preventing us (the electorate) from having a functioning opposition.

Labour politicians must begin to behave as a cohesive group and fulfill the function for which they were elected.

Dr Edward F Doherty

Swansea

Barbican blues

I don’t know about the acoustics of the Barbican Hall; for me the problem is its invisibility. Try finding it on foot (“What’s all the fuss, Sir Simon?” 13 January).

Chris Noël

Ledbury, Herefordshire