THE “Uberisation” of emergency care means that safe, effective and free NHS treatment is being denied to increasing numbers of people.

What is left of our hollowed-out emergency services is now overwhelmed by an ordinary level of demand. GPs are so concerned about the waiting times for emergency ambulances they are advising patients to “get an Uber.” The result will be many more deaths at home or on the way to hospital.

When Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was health secretary, patients were discouraged from attending accident and emergency, targets were scrapped and the pay, terms and conditions of junior doctors were attacked.

On paper, £182 billion was spent on healthcare from 2021 to 2022, but searching questions need to be asked as to where the cash is going because accessing the NHS is getting harder, services are being reduced and what is left is becoming unsafe for patients.

Hunt’s £6bn increase for the NHS won’t come near what is required to keep the NHS running in the face of inflationary pressures and a growing waiting list. Much of this cash will be funnelled to private hospitals and will deliver little at vast expense to the public purse.

Ambulance response times are increasing as crews spend entire shifts queueing outside hospitals because there are no longer enough beds or enough staff in the NHS.

In the meantime, popping into a pharmacy is being marketed as a worthy replacement for the type of emergency care that used to be available to everyone.

The seven million patients who require more than simple pain relief or eye drops are subjected to barriers and excessive waiting times before they can get the necessary treatment. The death of five-year-old Yusuf Ahmed is a damning indictment of a healthcare system that is gradually shutting its doors.

This dangerous NHS crisis has been deliberately created by decades of so-called “service redesign,” reform and restructuring, which has removed free, safe and effective emergency services.

An NHS system that was functioning well for patients and the staff who worked within it was badged as lumbering, inefficient and “in need of modernisation” by those seeking to turn it into a profit-spinning enterprise.

The only beneficiaries from all of the restructuring and “modernisation” of the NHS and ambulance trusts are the fat cats running things at the top and the private companies who are amassing billions in profit at the expense of both staff and patients alike.

Far from seeking a solution to the current crisis, those calling for the NHS to be turned upside down once again are seeking to funnel even more of the health budget into the private sector.

To add insult to injury, dedicated NHS and ambulance staff are seeing the value of their pay plummet to the point some are being forced to utilise foodbanks. It is little wonder so many are leaving when pay and conditions are at an unprecedented low.

Nurses are about to go out on strike for the first time in over 100 years and ambulance staff are also being balloted for industrial action.

No health worker wants to go out on strike, but they now feel that they have no choice because they can no longer sit back and watch the NHS crumbling around them.

Instead of resolving the union disputes, this Tory government will run the line that striking NHS and ambulance staff are the cause of the problems when the current NHS crisis has been decades in the making.

The billions being diverted into the coffers of private companies could be utilised to give NHS and ambulance staff the pay rise they need as part of a package of measures to reverse the growing NHS crisis.

However, the Tories are making a political choice to push down pay and push NHS staff out the door as they hand over billions to the private sector to deal with the Covid-19 backlog.

Patients and the public must support all disputes in the NHS because they are not just about raising pay, they are about retaining good staff in the NHS, the experienced staff who know what they are doing, the ones we will rely on to deliver care and treatment should we or our families ever get sick or have a serious accident.

For the first time in a long time, NHS and ambulance staff are joining the fight to try to reverse decades of deliberately manufactured decline. The outcome of this battle will be a matter of life or death for many of us.

Helen O’Connor is GMB Southern Region organiser.