Unhappiness with the NHS has reached record highs – but the public still supports it

Published

2 years ago

March 29, 2023

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The British public is the unhappiest it has ever been with the NHS, but still supports it in principle, a new survey has found.

The overall satisfaction with the NHS now stands at 29% – a fall of seven percentage points and the fourth-largest drop ever recorded in a single year. In 2010, satisfaction with the NHS was 71%.

The British Social Attitudes survey has tracked public opinion consistently since 1983.

Some 51% of people are unhappy with the healthcare service, a rise of 10 percentage points in a single year, and the highest levels of dissatisfaction since the survey began.

The 40th annual survey took place in September and October last year and asked 3,362 people from England, Wales and Scotland their opinions on health and social care.

The findings paint a worrying picture of how people perceive the NHS.

Over two-thirds of respondents (69%) chose long waiting times for GP and hospital appointments as one of the top reasons for dissatisfaction.

Accident and emergency departments have seen a sharp increase in the percentage of dissatisfied respondents, with a record 40% saying they are unhappy, according to analysis by the Nuffield Trust and The King’s Fund.

General practice (GPs), dentistry and inpatient hospital services were among the other areas reaching record levels of dissatisfaction, with the findings consistent across all ages, income groups, genders and political persuasions.

Of those who were satisfied with the NHS, the top reason was because NHS care is free at the point of use (74%), followed by the quality of NHS care (55%) and that it has a good range of services and treatments available (49%).

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the survey results should be a “red flag to the government”.

The results “should not be seen as a judgement of the efforts of frontline staff to recover services in the wake of the pandemic but rather, a sign that the NHS is not being given what it needs to fully deliver for its local communities”.

“With there being around 124,000 reported vacancies across the NHS in England and a maintenance backlog stretching over £10bn this is hardly surprising,” he added.

Almost 80% of NHS staff consider quitting

Unhappiness within the NHS is not restricted to members of the public, with a separate survey finding 75.5% of workers are considering leaving the service altogether.

The survey of 2,500 NHS employees by Organise found more than half are taking days off due to stress, anxiety or burnout.

The majority also said patients are experiencing medication errors, delays in procedures and compromised quality of care as a result.

It comes as thousands of NHS staff are striking with demands for better pay and improved working conditions.

Anabela De Barros, a recovery nurse working in London, told Sky News the pandemic left many NHS staff deeply traumatised.

“I have never seen so many dead patients in my life,” she said, speaking about her work during COVID.

“And it was nice that everyone was clapping for us. But I know nurses that are now going to food banks, so it’s not enough.”

Ms De Barros has just voted to reject the latest pay deal offered to nurses.

“We’ve had Brexit, COVID and now the war in Ukraine has made the cost of living so high. We are just tired. We are exhausted. And it doesn’t seem like it is going to get better any time soon.”

Nat Whalley, CEO and co-founder of Organise – a worker-led network for fixing employment – called it a “ticking time bomb at the heart of our healthcare system”.

“We don’t need empty promises; we need tangible investments in the NHS that allow workers to thrive in their roles, without suffering from stress, anxiety, and burnout,” said Ms Whalley.

Despite being unhappy, Brits still support the NHS

Despite the high levels of dissatisfaction with how services are operating, the public continues to show strong support for the principles underpinning the NHS.

Nine in 10 people backed the idea that the NHS should be free of charge when people need it.

But more than eight in 10 believe there is a major or severe funding problem for the service.

While taxation remains the favoured source of funding, more people believe the service should live within its budget.

Jessica Morris, report author and fellow at the Nuffield Trust, said: “It is clear that the level of unhappiness amongst the British public over the way the NHS is running is going to take many years to recover.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said the government was “hugely grateful” to NHS and social care staff for their working during the pandemic and dealing with the subsequent backlog.

“Cutting waiting lists is one of the prime minister’s five priorities and so far, we have virtually eliminated waits of over two years for treatment and latest figures show the number of patients waiting over 18 months has reduced by 80% from the peak,” they added.

A spokesperson for NHS England said: “The NHS is taking significant steps to further improve patient experience, including our recently-launched blueprint to recover urgent and emergency care alongside continuing to slash the long waits for elective treatment which inevitably built up during the pandemic, and we are working on new plans to boost primary care for patients as well as publishing a long-term workforce strategy shortly.”

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They also highlighted the government’s £14.1bn investment in health and social care over the next two years.

Wes Streeting MP, Labour’s shadow health secretary, said: “Support for the values that the NHS was built upon are unshakable. It will fall to the next Labour government to reform and rebuild the NHS, so it once again delivers quality care for patients, free at the point of use.”

UK

UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September – slower than expected

Published

48 mins ago

November 15, 2024

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UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September - slower than expected

The UK economy grew by 0.1% between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

However, despite the small positive GDP growth recorded in the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, dragging down overall growth for the quarter.

The growth was also slower than what had been expected by experts and a drop from the 0.5% growth between April and June, the ONS said.

Economists polled by Reuters and the Bank of England had forecast an expansion of 0.2%, slowing from the rapid growth seen over the first half of 2024 when the economy was rebounding from last year’s shallow recession.

And the metric that Labour has said it is most focused on – the GDP per capita, or the economic output divided by the number of people in the country – also fell by 0.1%.

Reacting to the figures, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Improving economic growth is at the heart of everything I am seeking to achieve, which is why I am not satisfied with these numbers.

“At my budget, I took the difficult choices to fix the foundations and stabilise our public finances.

“Now we are going to deliver growth through investment and reform to create more jobs and more money in people’s pockets, get the NHS back on its feet, rebuild Britain and secure our borders in a decade of national renewal,” Ms Reeves added.

The sluggish services sector – which makes up the bulk of the British economy – was a particular drag on growth over the past three months. It expanded by 0.1%, cancelling out the 0.8% growth in the construction sector.

The UK’s GDP for the most recent quarter is lower than the 0.7% growth in the US and 0.4% in the Eurozone.

The figures have pushed the UK towards the bottom of the G7 growth table for the third quarter of the year.

It was expected to meet the same 0.2% growth figures reported in Germany and Japan – but fell below that after a slow September.

The pound remained stable following the news, hovering around $1.267. The FTSE 100, meanwhile, opened the day down by 0.4%.

The Bank of England last week predicted that Ms Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.

Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.

The Bank’s quarterly report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.

UK

Meeting the deeply radical anti-tax group that is ‘growing in popularity’

Published

48 mins ago

November 15, 2024

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Meeting the deeply radical anti-tax group that is 'growing in popularity'

“If you are a member of something, it means you’ve accepted membership. Anything with ‘ship’ on the end, it’s giving you a clue: it’s telling you that’s maritime law. That means you’ve entered into a contract.”

This isn’t your standard legal argument and it is becoming clear that I am dealing with an unusual way of looking at the world.

I’m in the library of a hotel in Leicestershire, a wood-panelled room with warm lighting, and Pete Stone, better known as Sovereign Pete, is explaining how “the system” works. Mr Stone is in his mid-50, bald with a goatee beard and wearing, as he always does for public appearances, a black T-shirt and black jeans.

With us are six other people, mainly dressed in neat jumpers. They’re members of the Sovereign Project (SP), an organisation Mr Stone founded in 2020, which, he says, now has more than 20,000 paying members.

As arcane as this may sound, it represents a worldview that is becoming more influential – and causing problems for authorities. Loosely, they’re defined as “sovereign citizens” or “freemen on the land”.

Their fundamental point is that nobody is required to obey laws they have not specifically consented to – especially when it comes to tax. They have hundreds of thousands of followers in the UK across platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Telegram.

Increasingly, they are coming into conflict with governments and the law. Sovereign citizens have ended up in the High Court in recent months, challenging the legalities of tax bills and losing on both occasions.

In October, four people were sentenced to prison for the attempted kidnapping of an Essex coroner, who they saw as acting unlawfully. The self-appointed “sheriffs” attempted to force entry to the court, one of them demanding: “You guys have been practising fraud!”

The Sovereign Project is not connected to any of those cases, nor does it promote any sort of political action, let alone violence.

Instead, they are focused on issues like questioning the obligation to pay taxes, as Mr Stone explains, referencing the feudal system that operated in the Middle Ages.

“Do you know about the feudal system when people were slaves and were forced to pay tax?” he asks.

“Now, unless the feudal system still operates today, and we still have serfs and slaves, then the only way that you can pay taxes is to have a contract, you have to agree to it and consent to it.”

Another member, Karl Deans, a 43-year-old property developer who runs the SP’s social media, says: “We’re not here to dodge tax.”

Local government tends to be a target beyond just demands for tax. Mr Stone speaks of “council employee crimes”.

I ask whether, considering the attempted kidnapping in Essex, there is a danger that people will listen to these accusations of crimes by councils and act on them.

“Well that’s proved,” Mr Stone says. “We only deal with facts.”

Evidence suggests this approach is becoming an issue for councils across the UK, as people search online for ways to avoid paying tax.

Sky News analysis shows that out of 374 council websites covering Great Britain, at least 172 (46%) have pages responding to sovereign citizen arguments around avoiding paying council tax. They point out that liability for council tax is not dependent on consent, or a contract, and instead relies on the Local Government Finance Act 1992, voted on by Parliament.

But the Sovereign Project’s worldview extends beyond council tax. It is deeply anti-establishment, at times conspiratorial. Stone suggests the summer riots may have been organised by the government.

“The sovereign fraternity operates above all of this,” he says. “We look down at the world like a chessboard. We see what’s going on.”

He explains that, really, the UK government isn’t actually in control: there is a shadow government above them.

“These are the people who control government,” he explains.

“A lot of people say this could be the crown council of 13, this could be a series of Italian families.”

Professor Christine Sarteschi, an expert in sovereign citizens at Chatham University, Pittsburgh, says she’s worried about the threat sovereign citizens may pose to the rule of law, especially in the US where guns are readily available.

“The movement is growing and that’s evidenced by seeing it in different countries and hearing about different cases. The concern is that they will become emboldened and commit acts of violence,” she says.

“Because sovereigns truly believe in their ideas and if they feel very aggrieved by, you know, the government or whomever they think is oppressing them or controlling them… they can become emotionally involved.

“That emotional involvement sometimes leads to violence in some cases, or the belief that they have the power to attempt to overthrow a government in some capacity.”

Much of this seems to be based on an underlying and familiar frustration at the state of this country and of the world.

Mr Stone echoes some of the characteristic arguments also made by the right, that there is “two-tier policing”, that refugees arriving in the UK are “young men of fighting age”, that the government is using “forced immigration to destroy the country”.

Another SP member, retired investment banker David Hopgood, 61, says: “I firmly believe it is the true Englishman – and woman – of this country – that has the power to unlock this madness that’s happening in the West.

“We’ve got the Magna Carta – all these checks and balances. We just need to pack up, go down to Parliament and say: It’s time to dismiss you. You’re not fit for purpose.”

The members of the Sovereign Project are unfailingly patient and polite in explaining their understanding of the world.

But there is no doubt they hold a deeply radical view, one that is apparently growing in popularity.

UK

Wes Streeting ‘crossed the line’ by opposing assisted dying in public, says Labour peer Harriet Harman

Published

48 mins ago

November 15, 2024

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Wes Streeting 'crossed the line' by opposing assisted dying in public, says Labour peer Harriet Harman

Wes Streeting “crossed the line” by opposing assisted dying in public and the argument shouldn’t “come down to resources”, a Labour peer has said.

Speaking on Sky News’ Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Baroness Harriet Harman criticised the health secretary for revealing how he is going to vote on the matter when it comes before parliament later this month.

MPs are being given a free vote, meaning they can side with their conscience and not party lines, so the government is supposed to be staying neutral.

But Mr Streeting has made clear he will vote against legalising assisted dying, citing concerns end-of-life care is not good enough for people to make an informed choice, and that some could feel pressured into the decision to save the NHS money.

He has also ordered a review into the potential costs of changing the law, warning it could come at the expense of other NHS services if implemented.

Baroness Harman said Mr Streeting has “crossed the line in two ways”.

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“He should not have said how he was going to vote, because that breaches neutrality and sends a signal,” she said.

“And secondly… he’s said the problem is that it will cost money to bring in an assisted dying measure, and therefore he will have to cut other services.

“But paradoxically, he also said it would be a slippery slope because people will be forced to bring about their own death in order to save the NHS money. Well, it can’t be doing both things.

“It can’t be both costing the NHS money and saving the NHS money.”

Baroness Harman said the argument “should not come down to resources” as it is a “huge moral issue” affecting “only a tiny number of people”.

She added that people should not mistake Mr Streeting for being “a kind of proxy for Keir Starmer”.

“The government is genuinely neutral and all of those backbenchers, they can vote whichever way they want,” she added.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has previously expressed support for assisted dying, but it is not clear how he intends to vote on the issue or if he will make his decision public ahead of time.

The cabinet has varying views on the topic, with the likes of Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood siding with Mr Streeting in her opposition but Energy Secretary Ed Miliband being for it.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is being championed by Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater, who wants to give people with six months left to live the choice to end their lives.

Under her proposals, two independent doctors must confirm a patient is eligible for assisted dying and a High Court judge must give their approval.

The bill will also include punishments of up to 14 years in prison for those who break the law, including coercing someone into ending their own life.

MPs will debate and vote on the legislation on 29 November, in what will be the first Commons vote on assisted dying since 2015, when the proposal was defeated.