HEALTH

• Abolish the NHS’ internal market and restore the Health Secretary’s legal duty to provide healthcare in order to fully renationalise the NHS and eliminate private profit parasites.

• Make dentistry and eyecare free at the point of use again.

• Shift focus from treating symptoms to treating causes. For example, cardiac patients shouldn’t expect to be stuck on statins for the rest of their life if their problem can be cured outright. This will not happen whilst private pharmaceutical interests are prioritised in the NHS, and neoliberal politicians are allowed to run it. The NHS must be fully renationalised, with all services provided in-house.

• End compulsory competitive tendering requirements for local authority services and return services to being provided in-house.

• Higher taxes on high-sugar and processed/ultra-processed foods, subsidies for fresh food (fruit, vegetables etc), and stricter rules on predatory marketing of the former. We want to make healthy food cheaper for consumers, and end the practice of food companies of trying to addict us to bad foods.

• Ban any sort of data mining of medical records by pharmaceutical and AI companies, and order them to delete everything they currently possess as part of the renationalisation process. Personal data should not be used to build genetic profiles of people which then require paying a subscription fee to a private company in order to access personalised prevention tools if the profile shows a higher risk of developing cancer, diabetes etc. Someone’s ‘genetic predisposition' should never be allowed to morph into a financialised ‘preexisting condition' which follows them through their economic life, creating a genetic underclass with higher risk scores, higher insurance premiums etc. determined by corporate algorithms. Medical records should be private and only be accessed by the patient’s current medical staff on a need-to-know basis.

• Patients should be treated by qualified doctors and nurses, not ‘physician associates’ that the Conservative and Labour governments have been passing off as the equivalent of doctors.

• Establish a coherent pay framework that accurately reflects the training, skills and responsibilities of doctors in the 21st century. Physician Associates have less clinical and legal responsibility and work fewer hours yet they are paid more than their equivalent Foundation Year 1/2 resident doctors which is unfair. This unfairness is part of a systematic devaluing of the NHS and its staff by previous governments and it will be stopped.

• Prioritise UK medical graduates for speciality training programmes.

• End the brain drain of our medical staff leaving for jobs overseas by dealing with the burnout, stress and overwork that makes them leave. We will consult with the relevant bodies and staff to establish what these are, and what they want to be done to ease their workload.

• Extra funding for research bodies such as UKRI to conduct nationalised research in areas/subjects that private companies won’t touch because they can’t patent the results or make money (e.g. to research Vitamin D’s effectiveness against COVID-19 - Big Pharma won’t because they can’t make money from Vitamin D). Any successful projects will have the treatment(s)/cure(s) provided to the public for free on an open-source basis.

• Increased funding for Alzheimer’s/dementia research. This is a horrible end-of-life disease which nobody should have to go through.

• Require all businesses that require a food hygiene rating to display it prominently both in-store and online.

• Moving to measuring economic success with a Wellbeing and Happiness Index, of which health outcomes will be a factor.

• Create a Pet NHS. Our pets are not just animals, they are part of our families and we love them just as much as the human members. There shouldn’t be financial barriers to getting them the treatment they need when they are sick, just like there should be no financial barriers to human healthcare. A Pet NHS would ensure all our pets get the care they deserve when they need it.

• Learn the lessons from Covid and move from reactive crisis management to proactive resilience-building for a future health emergency including:

  • Diversifying suppliers and maintaining strategic stockpiles of critical goods (e.g., PPE, medicines, food staples, toilet roll, hand sanitiser).

  • Strengthening domestic production capabilities, particularly for critical items such as semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, and diversifying international suppliers.

  • Establishing pre-negotiated contracts with trusted suppliers for emergency scenarios.

  • Investing in AI-driven supply chain monitoring and resilient transport networks.

  • Creating fast-track regulatory processes for emergencies e.g. import/export controls, workforce redeployment etc.

  • Developing a skilled domestic workforce and flexible immigration policies for critical sectors.