UK

Why Lesbian Visibility Week matters to all of us – Kate Osborne MP

22nd April 2024Leave a Commenton Why Lesbian Visibility Week matters to all of us – Kate Osborne MP

“Women do not have equality, lesbians certainly do not have equality, and we must be raising this at every given opportunity.”

By Kate Osborne MP

This year marks 40 years since I took my mum to see the Rocky Horror Show to tell her that I was a Lesbian and 30 years since I bought the first ever copy of Diva Magazine that helped me feel less alone.

In those last 30 years Diva has been a lifeline for many young women – this year Diva is sponsoring Lesbian Visibility Week and whilst there is a lot to celebrate it is important that we don’t forget the challenges that lesbians still face.

I’m proud to be hosting an event on Monday night celebrating Lesbian Visibility in the Houses of Parliament and holding a debate in Parliament on Thursday for MPs to highlight Lesbian Visibility week – as well as the celebrations though, I will be raising the rise in Hate Crime, the rise in lesbophobia, the huge issues our trans community are facing and the many ways in which society seems to be going backwards.

In 2024, the fetishization of lesbians and same-sex attraction continues strongly on, represented in the film, music and pornography industries to hyper-sexualise women loving women.

And, of course, if we’re not being sexualised on TV then the shows with any real representation are cut – particularly those aimed towards a younger audience.

Representation in the media of lesbians, and LGBTQ+ women more generally, is shockingly poor. Currently, the only representation that seems to shine through and receive continuous contract renewals are the ones that appeal to producers as palatable lesbianism; the kind where either the women are masculine enough that they’re undesirable to men, or so hyper-sexualised that men are exactly the audience the show is attempting to attract.

Recent films such as Blue Jean captured the real essence of what it was like for many lesbians in the 1980s, particularly in the North East, and the impact Section 28 had on school teachers and pupils alike, but received very little recognition. Likewise, Gentleman Jack – a period-piece reminder that lesbians have existed throughout history despite the historical injustice of gay women being just ‘roommates’ – was cancelled after only two seasons.

Lesbians aren’t going anywhere – so why are they always swept to the side?

LGBTQ+ women are continuously let down, but perhaps most concerning is their continued abandonment by this Tory Government with regard to IVF provisions and the option to start a family without emptying their bank accounts first.

I held a Westminster Hall debate on IVF provision last year during which the Minister committed to bringing forward a statutory instrument to end the postcode lottery for same sex couples seeking IVF treatment.

Since this debate, I have written to the Minister twice asking for further information and raised this again in a Women and Equalities Committee meeting – of which I sit on – last November.

I have had no response.

The legislation has still not materialised.

Not one of the 42 ICB’s have updated their health policies since the Minister promised they would.

A timetable to ensure the financial and practical barriers to IVF for sames-sex couples are removed in full remains nowhere to be seen.

These changes have been promised for years, but of course this Government does not care about LGBTQ+ people, let alone LGBTQ+ women.

As it is, there are simply not enough global LGBTQ+ rights movements, and within that there is an even smaller number of movements dedicated to furthering the rights of queer women specifically.

Women do not have equality, lesbians certainly do not have equality, and we must be raising this at every given opportunity.

Whilst sport has presented itself as a largely positive space for LGBTQ+ women, there is still a long way to go, and the foundations of this must be laid in schools and other beginner levels.

The 2023 Women’s World Cup saw a greater number of LGBTQ+ players than ever before, and we should be celebrating this as a huge success for women everywhere.

But the reality remains that many young girls discovering their sexuality in secondary school or sixth form will face homophobia in the changing rooms – being told it is disgusting and dirty for them to be changing in the same locker rooms as the others.

LGBTQ+ women belong in every space, deserve the same access to sport, have a right to start a family, and must not be abandoned any longer.

All spaces in society must make continuous efforts to be safe and supportive, and celebrate our LGBTQ+ community.

This Lesbian Visibility Week’s theme is ‘unified not uniform’; lesbians and queer women should be provided with safe spaces to be as multifaceted and individual as they want to be – so we must all work hard to continue calling out lesbophobia as and when we see it.

Lesbians exist and have always existed, our visibility in the media must be expanded tenfold to ensure that there be no more shame, disgust or sexualisation around women loving women.

Our society will be one to achieve full equality and freedom for all if we continue to actively celebrate everyone within it.

This Lesbian Visibility Week I extend my solidarity to lesbians, and indeed all LBTQ+ women, everywhere.

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• Kate Osborne is the MP for Jarrow and a regular contributor to Labour Outlook. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.

Labour Outlook

 

No climate justice on occupied land!

21st April 2024

Leave a Commenton No climate justice on occupied land!

Orchards flourished

Propagandists called
Them barren
Land expropriated
For Europeans
Thirsting for
Territory

Remi Kanazi

Jenny Cooper argues that there is no climate justice or just transition without an end to the occupation in Palestine

“No climate justice on occupied land!” was the call of the huge civil society protest at COP 28 in Dubai last year, a concrete city in the desert coping with extreme flooding at the time of writing. Palestine has been the headline in almost every protest this year whether we are addressing climate change, anti-racism, the economy, or anti-war. And rightly so – from the tragedies of October 7th we have had an opportunity like never before to put the spotlight on the atrocities that take place daily in the Palestinian territories not just since October but for decades. Countless groups have met, talks have taken place, weapons have been fired, protesters have marched, stalls have been run, lectures given, books written and art hung. But world leaders carry on, witnessing the fall of the Berlin wall and the release of Mandela but ignoring the call for freedom for Palestinians, and accusing those that voice the call of antisemitism.

It is not only Palestine of course. At COP every year we hear the stories and share the tears of every person representing a displaced people; the first indigenous people of the Amazon and the Congo basin, the nomad people of the Sahara and the Samis of the Arctic circle to name just a few. These original inhabitants of the land understand how to live as part of nature, nowadays often risking their lives to save it unlike those that move in with the aim of destruction. Like the olive growers of the West Bank, groups who live in harmony with nature can produce food and nutrition in the most unlikely places, understanding the ecosystems and weather patterns they have worked with for generations. These people, more than anyone else, understand the connection between climate change, climate justice and land.

For it is the land which feeds and sustains us and gives us a space to call home with shelter, warmth and safety. Our children may not know that in the rich Global North – after all, it is frequently others’ lands which are exploited to grow our food and to produce our greedy energy demands. The Sami reindeer herders were obstructed by imposed wind farms on their herding lands whilst Amazonian communities have lost their forest homes and food webs to the destruction of the forest by loggers and companies connected to Tesco meat. In Palestine, road blocks, the wall, and Israeli guards separate olive growers from their trees, particularly at harvest time, in a deliberate attempt to break up the local economy and the growers’ abilities to grow. Gaza’s fishing boats are not allowed past the three-nautical-mile limit which would allow them to catch bigger species and the sardines they used to enjoy. And I haven’t even touched on the massive carbon footprint of the ongoing war and weapons linked to occupation.

“In our thousands in our millions, we are all Palestinians!” I chant alongside protesters against the occupation on our London marches. But my complicity in land grab is evident: I have eaten meat without knowing whether forest was chopped for the animals. I have eaten avocado without knowing whose land was grabbed to develop the new plantations needed to satisfy our ridiculous growing demand to have it crushed on sourdough for breakfast. “We are all settlers” may be more accurate.

But as with all climate justice, we can try to make individual choices and changes – and yes, we should boycott Israeli companies that have blood on their hands – but it is of course big system change that is needed. We must not accept from any incoming political party an assumption that green colonialism is ok. It is not. Land grab for wind farms IS as damaging as land grab for coal or oil. And plonking miles and miles of solar panels in the desert with the belief that “no one lives there” is not a valid solution. The people of the Sahara are traditionally a people whose livelihood depends on a nomadic lifestyle. This does not make one patch of the desert available for colonisation to suit our own selfish needs. As the Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi wrote:

orchards flourished
propagandists called
them barren
land expropriated
for Europeans
thirsting for
territory

Izzeldin Abuelaish lost his entire family to Israeli attacks in Gaza in 2009. He believes there is no “magic” square yard, or hilltop, that if ceded by either side would bring peace. “Peace”, he says, “can only come about after an internal shift…what we need is respect, and the inner strength to refuse to hate”. For those of us who are least likely to be targeted for speaking out on oppression, the responsibility is huge. On the last London march I chatted to a Muslim school rep from one of my local schools. She explained how she had been marching for Palestine ever since she was a child. “Our mother used to bring us – she had to” she said and went on to explain “Now that others have stepped up we no longer have to be here every single week – we can share it!”.

Once again we come back to the argument of Just Transition and the fact that it is inextricably linked to international solidarity. A Just Transition is only just when it has human rights and freedom for oppressed peoples at its core. A Just Transition is only just when it keeps all children safe from weapons and war. A Just Transition is only just when people can live without fear and hunger. What are we saving the earth for if not for people? People before profit should remain our mantra. People everywhere. But to make that a reality it is incumbent on all of us-particularly those less likely to be targeted – to speak out loudly and to act, without fearing the names we may be called as a consequence.

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• Jenny Cooper is a member of the National Education Union’s National Executive Committee.

https://labouroutlook.org/

 

For 40 Years, Brazil’s Landless Workers Have Fought to Build Humanity

21st April 2024

Leave a Commenton For 40 Years, Brazil’s Landless Workers Have Fought to Build Humanity

The MST does not only fight for land; it also seeks to enact agrarian reform and transform society… harnessing nature rather than degrading it and producing healthy food for society at large.

Vijay Prashad

On the 40th anniversary of the founding of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), Vijay Prashad of Tricontinental examines the MST’s tactics and organisational methods.

Brazilian landless workers, who live on settlements and encampments of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), gathered roughly 13 tons of food to send to Palestinians in Gaza between October and December 2023. MST cooperatives across the country participated in the solidarity campaign, which included milk from Cooperoeste in Santa Catarina, rice from Terra Livre Cooperative, the Cooperative of Settled Workers of the Porto Alegre Region (Cootap), and Cooperav in Rio Grande do Sul, and corn flour from Terra Conquistada in Ceará. The aid was sent to the Palestinian Agricultural Workers’ Union through the Brazilian Air Force. ‘The Palestinian people, like all the peoples fighting for their sovereignty, need the solidarity actions of other peoples’, said Jane Cabral of the MST national leadership. Indeed, the world must follow the example of Brazil’s landless workers.

Collecting food has only been one aspect of the MST’s solidarity action with the Palestinian people. The other equally important aspect has been about building a consensus in Brazil regarding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Over the past several decades, the right-wing evangelical movement in Latin America has promoted a pro-Israeli political agenda in Brazil and elsewhere. This movement defends Israel in the hope that it will destroy the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and build the ‘Third Temple’. Under this view, the temple will open the door to the return of Christ, and all non-Christians, including Jews, will be subjected to eternal damnation. Evangelical pastors in Latin America – many of them funded by US-based Christian Zionist groups such as Christians United for Israel – have spread this deeply hateful, anti-human view. This is an important reason why right-wing leaders in the region, including former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and current Argentinian President Javier Milei, are staunch defenders of Israel and the Zionist project. As such, the MST’s mass drive to collect food for Gaza was also a campaign to contest the growth of Christian Zionism in Brazil, advocate for the rights of the Palestinian people, and deepen education about and ties with the Palestinian struggle amongst its base.

The MST, with its nearly two million members, is the largest socio-political movement in Latin America and one of the largest peasant movements in the world. Since it was born forty years ago, in 1984, the MST has grown steadily because of its unique approach to building and maintaining its base among landless workers. Our latest dossier, The Political Organisation of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), examines the theoretical orientation that has enabled the MST to build this remarkable organisation on the terrain of Brazil’s wretched social hierarchies, which are rooted in the legacy of Portuguese colonialism, genocide, slavery, and US-backed military dictatorships. The art for the dossier, which is also featured in this newsletter, was created for the ‘Forty Years of the MST’ call for art organised by the MST, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, ALBA Movements, and the International Peoples’ Assembly. The second monthly bulletin from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research’s art department will focus on that exhibition; you can subscribe to it here.

The MST has three goals: to fight for land, to fight for agrarian reform, and to transform society. Based on Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, the MST organises landless workers to seize unproductive land and build settlements (assentamentos) and squatters’ encampments (acampamentos). At present, nearly half a million families live on such settlements and have gained legal tenure of the land, where they have built 1,900 peasant associations, 185 cooperatives, and 120 MST-owned agro-industrial sites, with an additional 65,000 families living on encampments and fighting for legal recognition. It is these institutions that produce the goods sent to Palestine. Despite the unequal balance of forces in Brazil, where the capitalist class enforces its rule over the economy and the countryside through domination of the state, the MST has been able to build its strength over the years and currently operates in twenty-four of the country’s twenty-six states. This strength is a product of the MST’s mass base and its organisational methods. As the dossier explains, a crucial aspect of the MST’s organisational theory is the idea that the assentados, the residents of the agrarian reform settlements, must always be in motion. There are seven organisational principles that allow the MST to drive this motion: its autonomy in relation to political parties, churches, governments, and other institutions, for which organisational unity is essential; the training of organisers both to participate in building the organisation and to be disciplined with respect to the decisions of the collective leadership; the importance of study; and the necessity of internationalism.

The MST does not only fight for land; it also seeks to enact agrarian reform and transform society. In other words, it seeks to change the very nature of agrarian capitalism and construct a model of agroecology that develops a balanced and sustainable form of agriculture – one that harnesses nature rather than degrades it and produces healthy food for society at large.

There are now over 2.4 billion people in the world who are food insecure. More and more famines are breaking out, from Sudan to Palestine, often related to conflicts of different kinds. Meanwhile, we are in the midst of the United Nations Decade of Family Farming, which began in 2019 and will close in 2028. The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) calculates that family or small farmers produce a third of the world’s food and up to 80% of the food in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Yet these small and family farmers do not control the land that they till, nor do they have the capital to increase their productivity. As a consequence, many small farmers produce food for the market but not enough to feed their families, leading to an epidemic of hunger amongst millions of small farmers and peasants.

As the FAO notes, ‘The majority of the 600 million farms in the world are small. Farms of less than one hectare account for 70% of all farms but operate only 7% of all agricultural land’. This great inequality in land ownership is at the heart of the work of the MST, as well as organisations around the world such as Mviwata in Tanzania (about whom we will be publishing a dossier later this year) and the All India Kisan Sabha in India (whom we wrote about in our June 2021 dossier, The Farmers’ Revolt in India). It is for good reason that the 16 million-member Kisan Sabha, for instance, joined the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against apartheid Israel in 2017 and why Mviwata, which represents 300,000 peasants, condemned Israel’s genocide of Palestinians at its annual meeting in December 2023. These farmers and peasants know that their task is not only to redistribute land, but to transform society across the world.

In 1968, Thiago de Mello (1926–2022), born in Brazil’s Amazonas, was sent into exile for his criticism of the military dictatorship. He went to Chile, where he befriended Pablo Neruda. Before long, de Mello was again forced to flee a military dictatorship, chased out of Chile because of the 1973 coup against the socialist project led by then President Salvador Allende. De Mello first went to Argentina and then to Europe. It was during this flight, in 1975, that he wrote his classic poem Para os que virão (‘For Those to Come’), the last few lines about the hurt that must be overcome by people who come to fight for social transformation:

It doesn’t matter if it hurts:

it’s time to move forward

hand in hand with those walking in the same direction,

even if it’s a long way off from learning how to conjugate the verb to love.

Above all, it’s time to stop being just the solitary vanguard of ourselves.

It’s about meeting. (The clear truth of our mistakes burns limpid and hard in our chests) It’s about opening the way.

Those who will come will be the people, and they will know themselves by fighting.

Happy fortieth birthday to the MST!

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• This piece originally appeared in the Tricontinental Newsletter on 18 April 2024.

https://labouroutlook.org/

UK

‘Sunak’s claim of a ‘sick note culture’ is immoral and deeply flawed’

Debbie Abrahams  22nd April, 2024

Photo: Stephen Barnes/Shutterstock

The Prime Minister’s speech on welfare reform last Friday was not only high on rhetoric and low on evidence, it was grossly offensive to millions of sick and disabled people and to thousands of GPs up and down the country. It’s clear we’re in an election year.

The Prime Minister says he supports the ‘values’ of the welfare state and agrees that a ‘safety net’ should be there for those who ‘genuinely need it’. He refers to a ‘moral mission to reform the welfare system, giving everyone who can a chance to return to work, making it a fairer system ‘for the taxpayers who fund it’.

Let’s just unpick this. Up until the Covid pandemic, this Conservative Government decimated social security support for working-age people, cutting £14bn of support between 2010 and 2020, and plunging millions of working people on low incomes and their children into poverty. How is that supporting a safety net? 

Rishi Sunak seems unabashed at his reference to a ‘moral mission’ and his sanctimony while he’s presiding over record levels of poverty, even deep poverty, and destitution. He talks about making the social security system fairer for taxpayers but fails to mention that the vast majority of social security claimants are also taxpayers.

The Prime Minister then goes on to conflate levels of economic inactivity with unemployment. People who are economically inactive are not unemployed; they are not looking for work for a variety of reasons including being retired or in full-time education. In fact, nearly 2 million economically inactive people would like to work!

‘Inactivity due to ill health can be linked to Tory failures’

What the Prime Minister failed to mention is that the increase in economic inactivity due to ill health can be attributed to the Conservative Government’s failures over the last 14 years. The statistics showed that the economic inactivity rate for those aged between 16 to 64 years is 22.2%, which although higher than a year ago, is in the context of an employment rate that still hasn’t returned to its pre-pandemic levels unlike other G7 countries.

But importantly, the record increase in economic inactivity due ill health is directly related to the increase in poverty and inequality across the country. All the evidence shows how our life expectancy is declining as well as how long we live in good health. And our NHS, barely recovering from the pandemic, is seeing record waiting times, with, for example approximately 2 million people waiting for an appointment for mental health services.

‘Talk of a sick note culture immoral and deeply flawed’

As a former Public Health consultant and academic myself I know the importance of good work to health but also of good health to work. But to talk about a ‘sick note culture’ is not only immoral but from a policy perspective, deeply flawed and counter-productive. When we know that many of the people the Prime Minister is referring to are experiencing mental health issues, referring to them in such a way is wholly wrong and frankly counterproductive.

This is not simply a hypothetical. In June 2018, bailiffs came to Errol Graham’s flat in Nottingham to evict him and discovered his body. Errol was penniless—he had no gas, no electricity and no water. His only food was two out-of-date cans of fish. 

At his 2019 inquest, the coroner confirmed that Errol had weighed four and a half stone when he died, and that the cause of death was starvation. Errol suffered from severe mental ill health. He had been in receipt of employment and support allowance and housing benefit since 2014, until he missed a fitness for work assessment in 2017.

Philippa Day, a young mum, took her life in 2019 also when the DWP stopped her social security support. I could give so many other examples. But in truth we don’t know the full scale of the deaths of vulnerable claimants over the last 14 years, because the Government doesn’t investigate them all.

‘Victim blaming approach’

My fear is that with this victim blaming approach it will increase. If the Prime Minister’s rhetoric is backed up by greater sanctions, there will be more cases like Errol’s and Pip’s.

Labour’s plan involves providing genuine, tailored employment support people back into work. It includes tackling the NHS backlogs, funded by cracking down on tax avoidance. It also involves the devolution of employment policy to localities because communities, not Whitehall, know best about what support is needed. Likewise, with the ‘New Deal for Working People’ a huge new tranche of workers’ rights will make the workplace more attractive to everyone.

Sunak’s speech is yet another example of why the Tories cannot fix the economic inactivity crisis, because they are its principal cause.

LabourList - The latest news and comment on policy, elections, polls and more on Keir Starmer's Labour Party.

Debbie Abrahams

Debbie Abrahams is MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on dementia

UK

Revealed: Poll finds most managers back Labour’s New Deal for Working People

Katie Neame

 22nd April, 2024

Labour campaigning for the New Deal for Working People in Blackpool South with Chris Webb.

 

Four in five British managers believe workers’ rights should be a top priority for national government policies, new polling reveals, with strong support for key elements of Labour’s flagship New Deal for Working People.

The polling from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) – exclusively seen by LabourList and the i – found that 80% of British managers believe workers’ rights should be prioritised in national policies, while 83% think improving workers’ rights can positively impact workplace productivity.

Some business groups have raised concerns about the potential impact of Labour’s plans to strengthen workers’ rights, but the CMI argued its research “suggests they may want to check in with their own management teams” and urged organisations to “ditch the old battles between workers and bosses”.

Justin Madders, shadow minister for business, employment rights and levelling up, posted on X: “This is such an important poll and really shows why we should not be timid about our policies to significantly boost workers’ rights.”

Strong support for policies included in Labour’s New Deal

Labour’s plans for enhanced family-friendly policies and the introduction of a right to disconnect were the most strongly supported policy measures among those surveyed, with 92% saying the policies were very important or fairly important for employers to adopt, and just 6% saying they were not important.

Protections for carers and action plans to eliminate gender, ethnicity and disability inequalities were also backed by the vast majority of respondents, with around 90% of the 1,000 managers surveyed saying such policies were important.

More than four-fifths of respondents (82%) said Labour’s plans to grant day-one rights to all workers were important, while 80% said the same of introducing a right to request flexible working as a default from day one.

Almost three-quarters of those surveyed (74%) said a ban on zero-hours contracts was important for employers to adopt, with the same proportion of respondents saying the publication of pay gaps other than the gender pay gap, such as ethnicity and disability, was also important.

Madders added: “Good and responsible businesses have nothing to fear and much to gain from strengthening workplace protections – by ending the race to the bottom we will promote good working practices.

“We have had a continual weakening of workers rights for far too long and many businesses recognise it is time to reset the balance – our policies are good for workers and good for those businesses who want to do the right thing by their workforce- we should be saying this more!”

Firms ‘need to ditch the old battles between workers and bosses’

CMI director of policy Anthony Painter said: “While some prominent business leaders and groups have called for plans to advance workers’ rights to be watered down, our new research suggests they may want to check in with their own management teams.

“We found that British managers not only believe it’s important for government to implement policies that improve conditions for their workforce, but they actively believe it will drive up productivity.

“Policies that support flexible working, stronger family-friendly rights and a renewed drive to close the gender pay gap are desperately needed if the UK is serious about creating modern workplaces where all employees can thrive.

“Workers want job security, and British managers consistently tell us that improved conditions often lead to higher productivity, recruitment and staff retention. Regardless of where these policies land, the New Deal for Working People plan is at least asking the right questions.

“Organisations need to ditch the old battles between workers and bosses. Our research shows they often want the same thing—a secure job, confident and capable managers and the ability to balance work and life responsibilities effectively.”

TUC: ‘Good employers have nothing to fear from Labour’s plans’

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “Managers know their workforce do a better job when they are happy and more secure at work.

“That’s why they overwhelmingly support key policies in Labour’s New Deal for Working People like banning zero-hours contracts and giving workers fundamental day-one rights.

“Since the Conservatives came into power in 2010, insecure work has exploded, living standards have been hammered and productivity has gone through the floor. The UK’s long experiment with a low-rights, low-wage economy has been total failure.

“Labour’s New Deal for Working People stands in stark contrast to the Conservatives’ dire record. A ban on zero-hours contracts, an end to fire and rehire and stronger sick pay – these are just some of the transformative policies Labour is promising with an employment bill in its first 100 days.

“And it would be good for our economy too. Decent, secure jobs are essential to building a motivated, healthy, innovative workforce – all vital for productivity growth. Good employers have nothing to fear from Labour’s plans. They should get behind the New Deal for Working People.”

Labour was approached for comment.

LabourList - The latest news and comment on policy, elections, polls and more on Keir Starmer's Labour Party.

UK

NHS crisis: This is what’s caused it and how we can solve it

The healthcare crisis is a political choice, not an economic necessity

Prem Sikka 

19 April, 2024 

By any measure, the UK healthcare system is in deep crisis. It is mainly due to policies of the government which have normalised austerity, real wage cuts, poverty, regressive taxation and under-investment in public services. People are paying for this with their lives.

Evidence of the crisis is all too visible. At the end of February 2024, some 6.24m individuals were waiting for 7.54m National Health Service (NHS) hospital appointments in England alone. This compares to 2.5m appointments in 2010 when the Conservative government came to office. It increased to around 4.6m in February 2020 just before the pandemic, and hit 6.2m in February 2022 and has increased since then.

The consequences are deadly. Some 300,000 people a year are dying whilst waiting for a hospital appointment. Millions have a long wait for ambulance and treatment in accident and emergency departments. In 2023, 14,000 people died in Accident & Emergency departments at hospitals. The deceased are typically the less well-off and suffering from delays and cancellations of hospital appointments.

The NHS has been weakened by years of underinvestment. It has fewer doctors and nurses per person than most of its peer countries. Due to lack of beds, staff and equipment, Britons die sooner from cancer and heart disease than people in many other rich countries. In 2022, over 39,000 people in England died prematurely of cardiovascular conditions including heart attacks, coronary heart disease and stroke.

It is not only hospitals; people are finding it hard to see a family doctor, often known as general practitioners (GPs). In 2015, the government promised to increase the number of GPs by 5,000 by 2020, but February 2024 there were the equivalent of 1,862 fewer fully qualified full-time GPs than there were in September 2015. Despite the pandemic and an ageing population, government funding for GPs in 2022-23 was 3.3% lower than in 2018-19. One in 20 patients have to wait at least four weeks to see a GP, a necessary precursor for most hospital appointments.

The UK has 49 dentists per 100,000 people, the lowest rate among G7 countries Last year, 23,577 dentists performed NHS work, down 695 on the previous year, and over 1,100 down on pre-pandemic numbers. Low rates of pay are cited as a major reason for dentists’ refusal to accept NHS patients. People are reduced to using pliers to pull their own teeth out and use glue to manage dental problems. Lack of oral health can increase the risk of gum, mouth and heart disease.
Neoliberal Economics

Agony for many is the direct result of government enforced austerity, anti-trade union and worker laws, real cuts in wages and unchecked profiteering. In 1976, workers’ share of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the form wages and salaries was 65.1%. It is now barely 50%. Despite real economic growth, the average real wage is unchanged since 2007. In March 2024, the pre-tax annual median wage was £28,104. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimated that a single person needs £29,500 a year to reach a minimum acceptable standard of living, and a couple with two children need to earn £50,000 between them. Low wages mean that more than 50% of the population has income which is below the level needed for minimum standard of living.

Nearly 6.2m workers are in insecure jobs, defined as low pay, temporary or part-time roles with contractual insecurity and very limited access to workers’ rights. Around 17.8m adults have annual income of less than £12,570. Some are able to top-up their incomes with social security benefits, which have failed to keep pace with inflation. From 2013-2019, government reduced social security benefits in real terms by freezing their value or increasing them by a lower rate than inflation. Work doesn’t pay enough and 38% of the claimants of universal credit are in work.

UK state pension is the main or the only source of income for majority of retirees. It is around 50% of the minimum wage and 2.1m retirees live in poverty. Out of a population of about 68 million, despite welfare payments, 12m people live in absolute poverty i.e. income below 60% of median income. Some 4.2m children, a quarter of all children, live in poverty. More than 400,000 children and young people a month are being treated for mental health problems.

Child poverty levels in the UK are worst among world’s richest nations. A UNICEF report ranked the UK 39th out of 39 countries. The government’s two-child benefit cap has deprived 422,000 families, often the poorest, of £3,200 a year.

People’s disposable income is depleted by a regressive tax system which penalises the poorest. In 2021-22, the richest fifth households paid 31% of gross household income in direct taxes; compared to 14% by the poorest fifth. The richest fifth paid 9% of its disposable income in indirect taxes, compared to 28% by the poorest fifth.

Low wages, never-ending austerity, loss of public services, regressive taxation and unchecked profiteering has deprived them of good food, housing, medicines, education and goods and services essential for a healthy lifestyle. In 2022/23, more than 800,000 patients were admitted to hospital with malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies, a threefold increase in 10 years. Scurvy and rickets, once banished, have returned. People living in damp, mouldy, poor and crowded accommodation are more likely to suffer from asthma, wheezing, respiratory illness, tuberculosis and meningitis. 1 in 6 people aged 16+ had experienced symptoms of a common mental health problem, such as depression or anxiety.

Due to poverty and lack of healthcare, 2.7m people are chronically ill. More than 500,000 under-35s are out of work due to long-term illness. A study reported that between 2012 and 2019, government imposed austerity caused 335,000 excess deaths in England and Scotland i.e. nearly 48,000 a year. According Marie Curie Charity, around 93,000 people are dying in poverty, which includes 68,000 senior citizens and 25,000 working age adults. Another study estimated that between 2011 and 2020, 1.2m people in England died prematurely from a combination of poverty, austerity and Covid.

The necessary healthcare support has been systematically eroded. In 2016, Exercise Cygnus concluded that the NHS would not be able to cope with a flu pandemic. The government responded by cutting the number of hospital beds. In 1997/98, England had 299,000 NHS hospital beds compared to 141,000 in 2019/20, down to 103,277 general and acute beds in January 2024. The decline may be partly explained by better medicine, technology and, care of the mentally ill in community, but the same factors affect other rich countries too.

The UK has 2.4 hospital beds per 1,000 population; compared to 12.6 in Japan, 7.8 in Germany, 6.3 in Poland, 5.7 in France, 4.4 in Switzerland, 3.4 in Norway, 3.1 in Italy, 3.0 in the Netherlands and Spain, and 2.9 in Ireland. The number of beds in unevenly spread and the poorest areas have the fewest. For example, Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has just 0.9 beds per 1,000 people, less than the average for Mexico. Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has just 1.7 hospital beds per 1,000 people, about the same level as in Colombia.
Ending the Crisis

Pandemics and ageing population add to healthcare pressures but the UK crisis is manufactured by the government’s intoxication with neoliberal economic theories advocating real cuts in wages and public services. These policies need to be reversed with emphasis on equitable distribution of income and wealth, better housing and funding of public services.

Such recommendations rile neoliberals who immediately raise the old bogey of “we can’t afford it”. It is as though they accept death and misery as the price for adherence to defunct economic theories and glory of the social gods of arbitrary self-imposed fiscal rules. They never asked about affordability when the state provided £1,162bn of support (£133bn cash and £1,029bn of guarantees) to bailout ailing banks and £895bn of quantitative easing to support capital markets. Since February 2022, some £12bn of support, including £7.1bn military aid has been provided to Ukraine. Some £37bn was found for the war in Afghanistan. In the last decade over £75bn subsidy has been handed to privatised rail companies.

People deserve better. Without eradicating poverty and creating a good healthcare system and social infrastructure, the UK economy cannot be revived. Capital’s share of GDP will need to be reduced so that workers can have better quality of life. Even if governments are unwilling to embrace the Modern Monetary Theory or additional borrowing, millions can be raised for better and effective healthcare by eliminating tax anomalies and perks enjoyed by wealthy elites. For example, by taxing capital gains at the same marginal rates as wages, around £12bn a year in additional revenues can be raised. The same remedy for dividends can raise another £4bn-£5bn. Levying national insurance on recipients on capital gains and dividends, currently exempt, can raise another £8bn-£10bn. Indeed, a few a few reforms without increasing the basic rate of income tax and national insurance or the headline corporation tax rate can yield over £90bn a year in extra tax revenues.

The healthcare crisis is a political choice not an economic necessity. Governments which can fund wars, bailout banks and subsidise corporations can also save lives and improve the quality of life of their citizens.

Image credit: Sheila – Creative Commons

Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.