2nd March 2023

What Hancock’s messages show
Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, says that Chris Whitty recommended that anyone going into a care home should be tested for Covid. Hancock claimed “to have thrown a ‘protective ring’ around care homes” but the UK was slow off the mark by international comparision and didn’t have sufficient capacity to test all entrants to care homes.

Spending on management consultants while wages fall
As pay in Britain continues to fall, and cuts to vital services – schools, justice system, housing – endure, spending on private-sector consultants has spiralled out of control. Between 2016 and 2019 spending on management consultancies in the NHS more than trebled. Now NHSE gives £13 million contract to PA Consulting to merge its regional teams – value for money?

A&E waits linked to 23000 excess deaths last year
There’s a pay wall on this Telegraph article but the message is clear. Royal College of Emergancy Medicine warns more than 1.6 million patients waited at least 12 hours for emergency treatment in 2022.

NHS needs sustained long term funding rises
The NHS will recover only with continuous funding increases over the next decade. Here are 10 evidence-based reasons for sustained rises in NHS budget.

Palantir involved in our NHS??
Tory MP David Davies said “Patient trust is vital to our NHS, so foreign companies such as Palantir, with its history of supporting mass surveillance, assisting in drone strikes, immigration raids and predictive policing, must not be placed at the heart of our NHS.” The government is planning to give a major contract on patients data to Palantir.

NHS strikes dates
Thousands of junior doctors will walk out from 13 March until the morning of 16 March, and nurses, paramedics, blood collection workers and other NHS staff in new strike over pay on 8th March.