UNISON has been arguing for months that the future of the NHS will be very much on the line when the country comes to vote in the EU referendum two weeks today.
Only yesterday, I unveiled UNISON’s official remain banner along with a group of our members who all work in the NHS. They more than most are only too aware of the damage that could be inflicted on an already overstretched health service by the economic shock that a Brexit vote would herald.
The Vote Leave campaign has run a grubby and deceitful campaign, with one of their most reprehensible claims that the NHS would be better off outside the EU. As their claims become ever more unbelievable they’re thankfully starting to lose Brexit brigade support.
Overnight Tory MP Sarah Wollaston – who is also a GP and chair of the Commons health select committee – has turned her back on the leave campaign and will be voting instead to remain in the EU.
She has branded the NHS claims made by the campaign she supported until recently “shameful”, and that “far from a leave dividend there would be an economic penalty and the NHS would suffer the consequences.”
This is exactly the argument that UNISON has been making loudly and frequently in recent weeks as the false rhetoric of the leave campaign has been ramped up to ever more unbelievable heights.
Health workers in particular are only too aware of the tough time the NHS has been having as it struggles to provide good quality patient care when there simply isn’t enough cash to meet the growing demand for its services.
I’m glad that Sarah Wollaston has listened to the concerns of those workers and many others – led by UNISON – over the risk Brexit poses to our public services. And I hope that her comments give further pause for thought to those who the Vote Leave campaign are cynically trying to con with false claims about NHS spending.
Dedicated NHS staff also know that the increasingly ridiculous claims coming from the Brexit brigade that the NHS would be quids in outside the EU are the stuff of nonsense.
The economic uncertainty of a European exit would mean spending cuts that would plunge NHS finances even deeper into the red, threatening jobs, patient services and hospital beds.
The British people rely on the NHS far too much to take a risk with it on 23 June.
