Image: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and challenger Owen Smith
As the Labour leadership campaign enters its final week, the Tories are getting on with the job of dismantling the NHS.
On Wednesday Shadow Health Secretary Diane Abbott warned fellow MPs the government was “planning for disaster”, in an opposition day debate on drastic plans to cut frontline NHS services, so-called ‘Sustainability and Transformation Plans’ (STPs). Abbott slammed the secretive plans, saying they were being “presented as a drive towards medical prevention” of ill health, but the planned savings “could only be achieved by preventing access to the NHS”. And she warned the plans were a “stalking horse” for privatisation, praising “the work of organisations such as openDemocracy and 38 Degrees” for ensuring that “the picture of what STPs will mean is becoming clearer”.
