A fundamental flaw in Labour's 10-year plan for the health service

Telegraph

19 hours ago

SIR – Labour has published its 10-year plan for the NHS (telegraph.co.uk, July 3), with changes focusing on community care, prevention and digitalisation.
What is not clear, however, is where all the funding will be found to make these changes happen.
Peter Williman
Chatteris, Cambridgeshire
SIR – Sir Keir Starmer has announced a 10-year plan for the NHS, knowing full well that neither he nor his party will be in power long enough to see it through, let alone take responsibility for any failures.
If he is pinning his political hopes on this, he is taking us for fools. In any case, he will probably water it down – or U-turn on controversial proposals.
Jonathan Mann
Gunnislake, Cornwall
SIR – I thought the NHS was unsavable, but I have to say I am impressed with the enthusiasm and ideas that Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, is bringing.
Success, however, will depend on NHS staff buying into the plans. They've been messed around by politicians for years and morale is low – but they will suffer even more if these reforms fail. Let's hope they give it their best shot.
Kevin Liles
Southampton
SIR – If Labour wants to provide a 'neighbourhood' NHS, it should start by reopening all the cottage hospitals that were closed down.
David Carter
Worcester
SIR – I am old enough to remember when the two Dr O'Keefe brothers in Eltham held two surgeries a day without an appointment system, went on their rounds, and would come out in the middle of the night in an emergency. Everyone was seen eventually, and the doctors knew all about patients and their families. My local surgery in south-east London, a bigger practice, used to offer appointments with your named doctor, as well as having a GP who saw all-comers in the order they arrived.
Now you can't book an appointment via the receptionist, even if you go to the surgery. Instead you are directed to a website; you describe your symptoms, then wait to be contacted.
I wish Sir Jim Mackey, the new head of NHS England, the best of luck in attempting to restore a system in which patients do not feel like an inconvenience.
Frances Braithwaite
London SE6
SIR – Recent letters (July 2) have discussed the standard of NHS food. After a triple bypass, my husband's first hospital meal was ham crumble. Anything higher in salt and saturated fat is hard to imagine.
Sandra Hancock
Exeter, Devon
Tearful Chancellor
SIR – I have been a Conservative Party member for more than 40 years. I don't agree with the Labour Government's policies on a number of issues.
However, I was shocked at the photographs (July 3) of the Chancellor in tears and looking exhausted. The Prime Minister and his backbenchers should be ashamed.
This lady has a very difficult job, and she seems to be undermined from every quarter. It is Sir Keir Starmer who should stand down for being incompetent.
Ian Palmer
Newbury, Berkshire
SIR – One would have to be very insensitive to be unmoved by the pictures of the Chancellor crying in the House of Commons.
However, my sympathy for Rachel Reeves is in direct proportion to the sympathy she evinces for farmers, for example, who are facing wipeout from inheritance-tax burdens, or small and medium-sized businesses hit by her National Insurance rises.
Andrew Newcombe
Combe Down, Somerset
SIR – Sir Keir Starmer says the Chancellor is doing an 'excellent job'. I dread to think what he would consider to be a bad job.
Tim Pope
Weybridge, Surrey
SIR – With the Prime Minister losing his authority, the Chancellor's fiscal policy crumbling, gilts rising and the pound sinking, I caught myself muttering: 'Come back Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt – all is forgiven'.
Mark Venmore-Rowland
Saxmundham, Suffolk
Ofcom's role
SIR – It is wrong to suggest that Ofcom takes a position in gender debates, or that we do not respect the Supreme Court's judgment on the legal definition of sex under the Equality Act ('Ofcom has just demonstrated its contempt for women, the truth and the law', Comment, telegraph.co.uk, June 30).
We considered the Supreme Court ruling very carefully, including its clear statement that it is not the role of the court 'to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex'. This is not Ofcom's role either. We never instruct broadcasters how to cover any issue, which is an editorial matter for them. We only assess content after it is transmitted, on the facts and context of the case.
Last year we assessed almost 10,000 pieces of content on television and radio. Each time – as required by law – we took full account of freedom of expression, broadcasters' editorial discretion, and viewers' and listeners' rights to receive a range of information and ideas. In the final analysis, only 33 breached our rules.
For the record, none related to discussions about the meaning of gender or sex.
Wallet essentials
SIR – John Barnett (Letters, June 30) mentions the eclectic contents of his wallet. He reminded me of Mr Thompson, the geography master at Dartford Grammar School in the 1960s, who urged us boys always to carry a length of string, a penknife and four pennies (for an urgent call home from a phone box).
I never had need of any of them.
Bob Clough-Parker
Chester
Ill-informed activists
SIR – I was moved by Sharone Lifschitz's article on the BBC ('Israelis like me deserve better than corporation's simplistic reporting', July 2).
Those who joined in with Bob Vylan's offensive chanting at Glastonbury – and probably felt it appropriate as a result of ill-informed media coverage (much of it from the BBC), disinformation or ignorance of Middle Eastern conflicts – should be made to read it.
I remember when Ms Lifschitz's mother, Yocheved, was released by Hamas after 16 days in captivity; she was so dignified, offering to shake the hands of her captors and saying how kind they had been to her. Oded, Ms Lifschitz's father, died in captivity.
Once again, this family has shown wisdom, humility and dignity, which self-righteous activists and politicians could learn from.
Liz Martin
Eyam, Derbyshire
SIR – That Tim Davie, the director-general of the BBC, is still in post following the broadcast of Bob Vylan's anti-Semitic Glastonbury set tells us all we need to know about the BBC: it is full of people who think they are right most of the time and, when they are not, that they are never actually wrong.
Jonathan Baldwin
Nantwich, Cheshire
Number plate crime
SIR – John Archibald (Letters, July 3) writes that the police told his friend that displaying cloned number plates is not a crime. Whoever said this should be retrained. Displaying forged plates is an offence under the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act 1994. The maximum penalty is two years' imprisonment.
James B Sinclair
St Helier, Jersey
Fruity filling
SIR – When I lived in South West Africa (now Namibia) as a child, we ate fig sandwiches, and avocado sandwiches with sugar sprinkled liberally (Letters, July 2). Very tasty indeed.
J Green
Little Kingshill, Buckinghamshire
SIR – The best sandwich is tuna in olive oil, with plenty of Marmite, between thick brown bread – preferably a triple-decker. It's highly nourishing, and guaranteed to bring about a refreshing 40 winks after lunch.
Richard Willcox
Southampton
The fragile economics of rural bus services
SIR – Charles Moore (Notebook, July 1) touched on a thorny issue in his comments about the problems with rural bus services.
However, in espousing smaller vehicles, I think he overlooked a couple of points.
First, if an operator requires full-size buses for 'peak' operations (such as school runs), it is more economical to also use them for off-peak services, rather than purchasing additional, smaller vehicles.
Secondly, the principal element in the cost of operating a bus is the driver's wages. These vary very little with the size of the vehicle being driven.
David Dunbar
Willersey, Gloucestershire
SIR – In the 1990s, when I lived in a small hamlet on a major road just outside Bath, there was a weekly bus that stopped. However, it didn't return until the following week.
Rob Dorrell
Combe Down, Somerset
SIR – Some years ago, I lived in the Powys village of Bettws Cedewain – population 400 – which had one bus a week to Newtown, about four miles away. It left the village at 10am and returned from Newtown at 2pm. There was, however, an alternative: enterprising villagers could cadge a daily lift to and from Newtown, but they had to fit in the back of the red Post Office delivery van.
The village also had a small shop, but it closed due to lack of business. When explaining the situation to me, the very polite husband-and-wife owners revealed that their total sales that afternoon had amounted to one lemon.
David S Ainsworth
Denton, Lancashire
Losing top predators has upset nature's balance
SIR – Here in our suburban garden in Kent, we see daily the disaster caused by the historical hounding to destruction of top predators such as wolves, lynx and eagles (Letters, July 3). It has led to an explosion of mesopredators, such as badgers, foxes, corvids (crows, magpies and jays), kites and buzzards.
Every spring, small birds rear their young, only for them to be gobbled up by the insatiable corvids. Our ground-nesting bees, which we were delighted to find in the shrubbery, were dug up and eaten by the local badgers, as were the hedgehogs. Meanwhile, the rise in domestic cat numbers has added to the loss of shrews, voles, wood mice, newts, toads and slow worms.
I have refused to switch on Springwatch since Chris Packham failed to condemn a piece of film showing badgers swimming to gravel islands at RSPB Minsmere to eat 'protected' avocet eggs and fledglings.
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