08/11/2026
🚨National Health Service🚨
The Socialist Labour Party is committed to a National Health Service available to all at the time of need, on demand and free of all charges – including prescriptions, dental care, and eye care. Our Party wants all NHS workers to receive wages and terms and conditions that reflect the social importance of their jobs.
Between 2001 and 2024 there has been a continuing loss of hospital beds and closures of hospitals. There have been cutbacks in those areas which specialise in the treatment of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental health and accident and emergency (A&E). In addition, one of the first lines of care has been decimated: namely the number of ambulances and paramedics. These cuts explain why Britain lags far behind other European health care systems.
Meanwhile private health care has continued to flourish on the back of NHS resources as it did under the Labour Government. It is a scandal that a person with sufficient financial resources or a private health insurance provider can get immediate appointments, diagnosis and treatment using in many cases NHS consultants undertaking private work. The Socialist Labour Party would stop all private health care. It is obscene that the NHS is paying between 50% and 100% more to employ agency doctors, consultants, and nursing staff because the NHS is understaffed and underfunded.
Our objectives involve the abolition of all contracting-out services; the strengthening of primary care, not at the expense of secondary or specialist doctors but properly funded health care based on community, family and individual needs; increased training and recruitment in Hospitals and GP practices; the re-opening of all ‘mothballed’ hospital wards and re-establishing district and cottage hospitals; restricting nurses and doctors hours to the average working week without loss of pay; the provision of N.H.S. nursing homes free of charge for those who need them and care homes owned and operated by local authorities and not by private owners.
The Socialist Labour Party is committed to the public ownership of the pharmaceutical industry, so that the provision of essential drugs is not determined by profits to shareholders - many of which are multi-national companies - but by the needs of all patients. Most recent available figures( 2021) suggest the Government allocated £233 billion for the Health Service that year but the NHS and GP practices only received around 75% of that - the rest being siphoned off to private interests including so-called ‘big pharma’.
According to the most recent budget the Government claims that in 2024 the NHS will receive £192 billion plus £12.6 billion for capital funding, a total of £204.6 billion. The cost of restoring the NHS to the best health service in the world requires an immediate further investment of £35 billion with an annual increase equal to the increase in the Retail Price Index.
This sum could easily be met by cutting Britain’s defence budget by two-thirds and scrapping the Trident nuclear program. These cuts in defence would provide £200 billion on Trident alone and £35 billion annually from the current conventional expenditure. Our Party is committed to
the preservation of life and not to the destruction of life.
