Corbyn set to lead NHS campaign push as Labour aims for largest ever day of action

Jeremy Corbyn and Jon Ashworth will tomorrow join trade unions for a national campaigning blitz on Tory failures on the NHS.

Corbyn and affiliated trades unions will call for extra NHS funding after a week in which Philip Hammond didn’t bother to mention the health service in his autumn statement.

It comes as a report this week revealed the enormous deficits of NHS trusts across England.

Tomorrow’s push on the NHS is set to be Labour’s largest ever national campaign day as the party aims to utilise its army of new and longstanding members, Jon Trickett said in an article for LabourList.

The day of action has been planned for months but has been given added force by Hammond’s neglect of the NHS during his mini-budget on Wednesday.

“Under the Tories our NHS is underfunded and understaffed,” Corbyn wrote in an email to Labour members.

“This simply isn’t good enough. The NHS is our party’s finest creation. We created it to care for us all – but now it’s time for us to care for the NHS.”

Gail Cartmail, assistant general secretary of Unite, said 3.9 million people are languishing on waiting lists and it is becoming harder to get a GP’s appointment.

“These are choices the Tories have made but it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Momentum billed the campaign day as an opportunity “to fight for our NHS” and to let people “know how destructive the Tories are for our health service.”

A report by the National Audit Office released on Tuesday revealed that two third of NHS trusts have reported a deficit totalling some £1.85bn.

Corbyn raised the issue of the NHS at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, accusing Theresa May of failing to “provide the NHS and social care with the money it needs to care for the people who need the support” it offers.

Read the full Jon Trickett article on LabourList from 3pm.