A letter a day to number 10. No 1,512
Thursday 04 August 2016.
Dear Mrs May,
The Telegraph reports that there has been a rise in payments for NHS trust interim managers being paid “off payroll” from 961 in 2013/14 to 1,193 in 2014/15.
Given that the NHS is in crisis thanks to the actions of Jeremy Hunt, there can be no possible excuse for the eye watering sums these people are being paid. One interim manager, Steve Leivers, was apparently paid £59,500/month, equivalent to an annual salary of £715,000, to act as ‘turnaround director’ of Kings College Hospital Foundation trust, in London. I rather think it is not Kings College Hospital Foundation trust that needs a turnaround director but the Department of Health. Jeremy Hunt is not only Britain’s most renowned typographical error he’s a walking disaster.
I remind you that this is public money that is being used and abused and government has a duty to protect the public purse and to apply pay restraints at a time when front line staffing pay is capped.
The government was right to put a cap on agency staffing which hospitals are increasingly forced to rely on if they are to remain in operation due to catastrophic cuts in nursing staff.
The NHS is reported declaring a £2 billion deficit this year. Even a modest cut in corporate handouts, which were £93 Billion last year, would amply cover the needs of the people’s most vital and important asset. David Cameron boasted of creating 1,000 jobs a day, jobs that he actually did not create and which were mostly insecure, zero hours contracts and desperate self employed ventures because no jobs were available, yet the real jobs he could have created and boasted of are entirely absent in Britain’s largest employer, the NHS. Britain needs real jobs not PR spin.
Britain is in the grip of a housing crisis and the worst social housing crisis since WWII. Instead of selling off housing estates to privateers, who are more interested in profit and building luxury homes rather than homes for ordinary people, what we need is a massive social housing building programme, which would create real jobs and boost the real economy. But, of course, that’s not part of the neoliberal end game, so beloved of George Osborne, which involves the transfer of the nations wealth and resources to privateers and the unlovely hands of vulture capitalists. Britain is suffocating under the weight of corporate greed and it must stop!
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nhs-job-cuts-4000-senior-3228433
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/07/corporate-welfare-a-93bn-handshake
2013/14: the worst year for social rented house building since WW2
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/30/housing-crisis-council-homes-are-the-answer
Fear and Loathing in Great Britain 