“This is what a national emergency looks like” – Labour’s latest party political broadcast

This is what the NHS crisis looks like.
Here’s an exclusive look at our latest political broadcast. pic.twitter.com/9CQ9qaWfwb

— The Labour Party (@UKLabour) February 13, 2019

Read LabourList‘s preview of the new PPB here.

Below is the full script text.

This story is told by actors. It is a real story.

Nurse: Look, no one comes into nursing because they expect an easy ride, you do it because you want to help people. It’s as simple as that.

But we’re at breaking point. Exhausted, overworked, undervalued. Some days there’s not enough time to eat or even take a toilet break. Let alone listen to someone who’s lonely, or who’s just had a relative pass away…

In 2017, the NHS winter crisis was branded a ‘humanitarian crisis’ by the Red Cross.

Patient: You know what, I don’t get it. I mean, we pay our taxes, right? Everyone around here is doing their best, you can see it, but they ain’t got the staff and they ain’t got the beds. 

There’s people on trolleys, in the corridors, for hours on end? No privacy, no dignity. What’s happening to this country?

Last year, 25,000 operations were cancelled due to the winter crisis.

Surgeon: This is what a national emergency looks like. We’ve got over 4 million people waiting for an operation. These are real people, real lives.

You try telling someone who’s waited six months for an operation it’s been cancelled again. I want to make people’s lives better, not add to their stress.

The Tories have cut £7 billion from social care since 2010.

Patient: You got people awaiting hours for an ambulance and then being told there ain’t none. Social care is in crisis – that’s not right.

The NHS is one of the things that made me proud to be British. And the Tories are running it into the ground so they can sell it off to their mates.

Hundreds of GP surgeries have closed under this government affecting more than a million patients.

GP: We needs thousands more GPs but more and more have had enough and are leaving. There’s not enough practice nurses or receptionists.

It affects everything. At times we’re so oversubscribed, we can’t even offer routine appointments. And where do people go? They go to A&E.

Relative: You know what makes me mad? I’ve just seen a nurse running to top up the meter in the car park. I mean it’s all you need isn’t it?

You come to visit a poorly family member and they’re stinging you for the car parking. Wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t have to wait 4 hours to get seen in the A&E. That’s if you can get to one, if it hasn’t been closed, or “downgraded”.

Privatisation has doubled under the Tories. Last year, the Tories handed out nearly £9 billion to private healthcare companies, whose main priority is profit, not patient care.

Surgeon: Now we’re sending patients to private hospitals for operations. Spending billions outsourcing treatment that could be done within a properly funded NHS.

But that doesn’t fit with this government’s program. They don’t want a publicly funded healthcare system. They have other ideas.

Teenage suicides have nearly doubled since 2010.

GP: I hear warm words about mental health but it’s all a sham. Services are being cut all over the place. I have to sit with parents and tell them their teenager has to be sent to halfway across the country to have their eating disorder treated.

Can you imagine the heartbreak and stress that causes? We are so much better than this as a country.

For the first time since WW2, life expectancy is going backwards in the poorest areas.

Patient: Oh, I know, we’ve got to tighten our belts, all in it together… We’ve been doing that for the last 8 years though, haven’t we? What’s it gotten us?

Health and social care cuts have been linked to 120,000 excess deaths in England.

Nurse: There’s a lot of anger, and I get it. I can’t do the work of three people, I just can’t do it. When I see elderly patients waiting hours in A&E, ambulances queuing up round the block, not even able to get near the doors. How does this make sense? In one of the richest countries in the world?

Our NHS is dear to every one of us. But it is in danger. Labour will invest in it. We’ll recruit the doctors and nurses it needs. And we’ll end Tory privatisation. Labour created our NHS. And we will rebuild it.