“Stop Undermining the NHS in NI”, UUP tells DUP MLAs
Following DUP MLA Tom Buchanan’s decision to dismiss investment in our National Health Service as “simply tossing in more and more money”, UUP South Down MLA and Assembly Health Committee member John McCallister has called on Mr. Buchanan and his colleagues to stop undermining the NHS in Northern Ireland.
Mr. McCallister said, “DUP MLA Tom Buchanan has now joined his colleagues Iris Robinson, Alistair Ross, and Mervyn Story in defending the Finance Minister’s decision not to fund the NHS in Northern Ireland to UK levels. I had expected more of Mr. Buchanan as a fellow-member of the Health Committee. I had expected that he would have put our NHS first. Instead he smugly tells the public that our health services do not require investment – or, to use his own dismissive description of investment in the NHS, ‘simply tossing in more and more money’. Nor does Mr. Buchanan stop there. Instead of praising the professionalism and dedication of our hard-working health professionals, he talks about the ‘failings of the NHS’.
“Mr. Buchanan says that his party ‘wants to see the maximum resources directed towards health’. If this is so, why has the DUP Finance Minister refused to fund the NHS to UK levels? If this is so, why has the DUP Chair of the Health Committee taken upon herself the role of a cheerleader for the Finance Minister?
“The Appleby Report into Northern Ireland’s health services unequivocally demonstrated the need for increased investment in our NHS. Appleby said of Northern Ireland’s health services, ‘a significant increase in resources is required in the coming years’. The Finance Minister Peter Robinson, supported by Health Committee Chair Iris Robinson, disagrees: his Draft Budget fails to provide increased investment for our health services.
“The DUP’s stance on this issue – as with so many others – has radically changed in recent times. As recently as 2005, Iris Robinson was telling the House of Commons that ‘significant investment is required’ in Northern Ireland’s health service and that the DUP ‘advocate increased funding’. Now Tom Buchanan, presumably at the behest of the Finance Minister, is dismissing investment in our NHS as ‘simply tossing in more and more money’. Obviously some DUP u-turns – such as accepting power-sharing and the devolved institutions of the Belfast Agreement – have been very welcome, if over-due. A u-turn on the importance of investing in the NHS, however, is self-evidently not in the interests of Northern Ireland.”