A top Labour MP laid out plans to axe the non-dom tax status to fund the NHS while speaking exclusively to The Northern Echo on Saturday (February 25th).
At Barnard Castle’s Richardson Community Hospital, Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting laid out his plans for the NHS should Labour win the next general election.
Joined by future Labour MP Candidate for Bishop Auckland, Sam Rushworth, the pair took a tour of the hospital with members of staff, learning about patient rehabilitation and care.
Following the visit, Mr Streeting said: “The NHS is in the biggest crisis in its history. We’ve got the highest waiting lists in the history of the NHS.”
“For the first time ever, emergency care is broken to such an extent that when people dial 999 or visit an A&E they can’t be guaranteed to receive the emergency care they need.”
Recent statistics have shown that in the North East, over 65,000 people are waiting more than twenty eight days for a GP appointment and over 15,000 have been waiting over six weeks for a health diagnosis.
Labour’s plans, that involve increasing university places on medical degrees, are set to be funded by abolishing the non-dom tax status that sees individuals who do not permanently reside in the UK benefit from tax breaks.
He said: “Unless we give the NHS the staff it needs, patients won’t get treated on time. Which is why we’ve committed to the biggest expansion of NHS staff in history.”
“As we’ve heard from the patients here at the Richardson, they could not be more praising of the nurses and the staff of the NHS. The people who work in the NHS, lead the NHS, are providing the very best care they can but they don’t have a government that is on their side.”
“We’ll double the number of medical school places, increase nursing and clinical training places by 10,000 a year, double the number of district nurses qualifying, and train up 5,000 more health visitors.”
Read more: Labour MP West Streeting pledges to slash NHS waiting times
Mr Streeting said: “We’ll fund that by abolishing the non-dom tax status because we think that wealthy people that make Britain their home should pay their taxes here too.”
“If we’re serious about making an NHS fit for the future, only a Labour government is going to do that.”
In 2021, the cap on medical school places sat at 9,500 (BeMo Academic Consulting), a statistic Labour candidate Mr Sam Rushworth was critical of.
He said: “There are young people here in Barnard Castle, and I’ve met them, who got straight A’s in their A-Levels and they wanted to go to med school, and there were not enough places.”
He added: “The government lowered the cap on the number of doctors being trained, right at the moment when we actually need more doctors.”
But it’s not just doctors places that are a major question – in 2019, Conservatives pledged to build 40 new hospitals.
Currently, only ten have been built, with the possibility of more being developed under question.
Upon the suggestion of exploring this further, Mr Streeting said: “My reassurance to voters across the North East, in fact, across the country, is that we’re not going to make promises we can’t keep.”
He added: “We’ve got to think about those hospitals that are in urgent need of refurbishment, where we’d be better off building new hospitals and also thinking about what the long-term future of the NHS looks like.”
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