Rescuing Our Healthcare – with £6 billion per year

Our healthcare system requires radical change, with £6 billion per year each year until 2030.

We would put an immediate stop to NHS privatisation, as well as give more power to manage Bristol’s healthcare to the local council and community.

Unlike other parties, our full set of policies are designed to prevent healthcare issues in the first place, leading happier, healthier lives and reducing the burden on the healthcare system.

The Green Party is so proud of our Health Service and want to build on its founding principles: universal, publicly provided healthcare free at the point of delivery.

However, our healthcare system has been systematically underfunded for the best part of a decade; with the slack being picked up by private industry – and we want to put a stop to that in Bristol and across the country.

We are pledging £6 billion to our NHS per year, each year. This programme of sustained investment would bring the UK in line with the average funding of northern European countries by 2030.

But healthcare is not just about funding. Firstly, we must ensure that our healthcare service remains in the hands of the people – and I will fight to end the creeping privatisation of the NHS. Secondly, we must put mental healthcare on equal footing as physical healthcare, with all who need mental health therapies able to do so within 28 days.

Access to healthcare should also be equal to all. More for community health centres are needed and a city like Bristol needs more of a say on how healthcare works in the area.

The Green Party manifesto also pledges a guarantee to healthcare for those who often struggle to gain equal access to service, including women, migrants, LGBTIQA+ communities and BME communities. We need to increase funding in the areas specifically used more by these groups to provide such equal access.

Healthcare is not just about the care, either. Everyone wants to lead a happy, healthy life and there is so much the government does not do to make this easy. Any Green Party MP will campaign for a number of things to improve healthcare outcomes for all, such as:

• A Green New Deal for transport, which will reduce air pollution and increase physical activity for all.
• Planting 700 million trees, providing healthier air for everyone to breathe.
• Ending the war on drugs, treating problematic drug use as the health issue instead of a crime, drastically reducing the strain on the NHS over time.
• Ending austerity which is pushing people in the UK further and further into poor health outcomes every year.