28 April 2015
Speaking about the campaign, Green Party Norwich South candidate, Lesley Grahame said: “I’m very happy to receive the petition from 38 Degrees members calling on me to do everything I can to save our NHS.
The petition asks me to stop privatisation, ensure adequate funding, and keep the NHS out of TTIP, the treaty that would allow corporations to sue governments for loss of profit. The Green Party goes further than these requests. I will do everything in my power to reverse the cuts, bring the outsourced contracts back in-house, and scrap the odious treaty in favour of the Alternative Trade Mandate, a set of trade rules that puts the public interest at its heart.
“I have been a nurse in the NHS for 30 years, and see standing as a Green Party Parliamentary candidate as the best way to advocate for patients and staff. Passionate about public health, I want to contribute to an NHS and a society that keeps people well. Green politics is public health by other means. I was one of the last cohorts of nurses to train under the old apprenticeship type training, and have seen the Registered and Enrolled Nurse system replaced by a graduate/non-graduate hierarchy, followed by pay grading and currently banding. All of these were supposed to fix nursing career structures, but none of them made up for low pay and constant re-organisation.
“Nurses aren’t noted for our militancy, and most of us are far better at standing up for patients than for ourselves. Nurses are more likely to be in Royal College of Nursing than a TUC affiliated trade union, which perhaps reflects their priorities in working for patients, rather than teams or institutions. I’ve always admired the way my colleagues act with individual patients as though they were the only person in the world who mattered in the present moment. I see nursing as adding knowledge, skill and experience to natural compassion, or anonymous goodwill. The motivation is not unlike that of giving blood (which many nurses do, including myself).
“Some of that goodwill was dented by ongoing belittling that I first remember as Maggie Thatcher describing how nurses liked to make do, a view that has been enacted through continuing low pay. Few nurses go into it for the money, and we wouldn’t want them to, however nurses still need to live. The average ward nurse earns £21k, compared with the UK average of £26k, and MP salary is £67k. The nurses I know are overworked, over-bureaucratised and undervalued – except by most patients. Their stories have major parallels with teachers’ as both are leaving their professions reluctantly but in droves.
“The NHS embodies the best of British values, of caring, community, and ‘can do’. Cutting healthcare costs is a driver of poor care. I am standing for excellent, free and universal health care, in a society that allows people to thrive.”
Photo: Norwich North and South candidates, Adrian Holmes and Lesley Grahame, for the Green Party in Norwich.
