Stephen Hawking blames Tory politicians for damaging NHS

www.theguardian.com /science/2017/aug/18/stephen-hawking-blames-tory-politicians-for-damaging-nhs

Denis Campbell

Stephen Hawking has accused ministers of damaging the NHS, blaming the Conservatives in a passionate and
sustained attack for slashing funding, weakening the health service though privatisation, demoralising staff by
curbing pay and cutting social care support.

The renowned 75-year-old physicist was speaking to promote an address he will give on Saturday outlining how he
owes his long life and achievements to the NHS care he received, and setting out his fears for a service he believes
is being turned into a US-style insurance system.

The NHS saved me. As a scientist, I must help to save it | Stephen Hawking
Read more

The author of A Brief History of Time did not name any minister or political party in his general complaint, but he
blamed a raft of policies pursued since 2010 by the coalition and then the Conservatives for enfeebling the NHS and
leaving it unable to cope with the demands being placed on it.

The crisis in the NHS has been caused by political decisions, he said. The political decisions include underfunding
and cuts, privatising services, the public sector pay cap, the new contract imposed on the junior doctors and removal
of the student nurses bursary.

Failures in the system of privatised social care for disabled and elderly people has also placed additional burden on
the NHS.

Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21, a story told in the film The Theory of
Everything, and has increasingly relied on the NHS as his condition has deteriorated.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne star in The Theory of Everything. Photograph: Working Title
Films/Allstar

His speech at the Royal Society of Medicine will single out Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, who claimed that
11,000 patients a year died because of understaffing of hospitals at weekends. Hawking will say that four of the
eight studies cited by Hunt were not peer reviewed and that he ignored 13 papers which contradicted his
statements.

1/3
Speaking as a scientist, cherry picking evidence is unacceptable, he will say. When public figures abuse scientific
argument, citing some studies but suppressing others, to justify policies that they want to implement for other
reasons, it debases scientific culture.

One consequence of this sort of behaviour is that it leads ordinary people not to trust science, at a time when
scientific research and progress are more important than ever, given the challenges we face as a human race.

Criticising NHS privatisation, Hawking will say that the 2.9bn spent every year by hospitals in England on
temporary personnel to alleviate chronic understaffing has enriched private employment firms while denying the
NHS vital funding.

The huge increase in the use of private agency staff, for example, inevitably means that money is extracted from
the system as profit for the agency, and increases costs for the whole country.

Hawking will says he fears that private firms have gained such a large role in treating NHS patients they are now
undermining its founding principles and opening the door to the Americanisation of care.

We must prevent the establishment of a two-tier service, with the best medicine for the wealthy and an inferior
service for the rest. International comparisons indicate that the most efficient way to provide good healthcare is for
services to be publicly funded and publicly run.

We see that the direction in the UK is towards a US-style insurance system, run by the private companies, and that
is because the balance of power right now is with the private companies.

Politicians need to defend the NHS and the public be encouraged to take a stand, he will say.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

There have been a number of protests over cuts to the NHS in recent years. Photograph: Victoria
Jones/PA

He rejects claims that the spiralling costs of treating an ageing and growing population, coupled with tight
government finances, mean the NHS, which will receive 149.2bn of public funding across the UK this year, has
become too expensive to continue in its present form. That idea has sparked inquiries by select committees of both
houses of parliament, thinktanks and medical bodies.

When politicians and private healthcare industry lobbyists claim that we cannot afford the NHS, this is the exact
inversion of the truth. We cannot afford not to have the NHS, he will declare.

Hawking, who is acclaimed for his work on black holes in space, works at Cambridge University as director of
research at the centre for theoretical cosmology.

He will recount how staff at Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge saved his life in 1985 when, suffering from
2/3
pneumonia related to problems with his larynx, he was airlifted there from Switzerland where doctors had said they
could not save him and that his ventilator should be turned off.

He will also tell of undergoing a risky but ultimately life-saving procedure to remove his larynx in 1999, under the
surgeon David Howard at a London specialist hospital. I have had a lot of experience of the NHS, and the care I
received has enabled me to live my life as I want and to contribute to major advances in our understanding of the
universe.

Prof Sir Simon Wessely, the RSMs president, said: Prof Stephen Hawkings reputation goes before him, so when a
man of his extraordinary intellect but also with his equally extraordinary experience of illness, talks about the NHS
and its values, we must all pay close attention.

Responding to Hawkings criticisms on variation in care across the week, Hunt tweeted on Friday night:

Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt)

Stephen Hawking is brilliant physicist but wrong on lack of evidence 4 weekend

effect.2015 Fremantle study most comprehensive ever 1/2

August 18, 2017

Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt)

And whatever entrenched opposition,no responsible health sec could ignore it if you
want NHS 2 be safest health service in world as I do 2/2

August 18, 2017

The government defended its record on the NHS and pointed to the Commonwealth Fund thinktanks recent verdict
that the service is the best out of 11 rich countries health systems. This government is fully committed to a world-
class NHS free at the point of use, now and in the future. Thats why were backing it with an extra 8bn of
investment over the next five years, a Department of Health spokeswoman said.

Today, there are almost 11,800 more doctors and over 12,500 more nurses on our wards than there were in 2010
and the NHS is seeing 1,800 more A&E patients within the four-hour standard every single day. Despite being busy,
the NHS has been ranked as the best, safest and most affordable healthcare system out of 11 wealthy nations, as
analysed by the Commonwealth Fund.

3/3