The Commentary

In our town we are involved at present in fighting to prevent the closure of the Royal Surrey County Hospital. The initial rumour was that only the A&E would shut, but now we are in a stand off. It is either us or St. Peter’s at Chertsey. But why should either close?

As we travelled recently we passed a campaign march in Westbury, Wiltshire, and many other areas of the country are threatened with similar hospital closures. What is going on?

Writing to the Health Secretary only produces an astonishing ‘couldn’t-care-less’ reply: ‘It’s nothing to do with us, decisions are to be taken locally.’ Hospital managers argue that a slimmed down system will be more efficient — but no one believes them. Local doctors have commented that there are problems in the way budgets are calculated. Middle-class areas tend to be populated by more health-conscious people who use hospital facilities more. Then hospital trusts are told ‘If such and such a hospital in this (working class) area can keep to budget, why can’t you?’

Over the summer the headline news was of the influx of people into our country and the population soaring. Surely this means we will need more hospitals, not fewer.

Conspiracy theories

Apart from allegations of hospitals being closed in Tory areas, have people in government and the upper echelons of the civil service some other dark plan in all this? With hospitals being closed, and the nearest, therefore, being many miles away for more people, it is clearly elderly and poor people who will suffer. Is the closure of hospitals a back-door attempt to ‘reduce the surplus population’? (Aren’t these the words of the hard-hearted Scrooge when asked for a donation to help the poor in Dickens’s famous A Christmas Carol?)

Or here’s another conspiracy theory. With the closing of NHS hospitals are the government hoping that local people will re-open the facilities as private hospitals? Is this a way to end the ‘burden’ of a free health service without being seen to be directly culpable? And in doing away with free health care, will that make this country less attractive to the great numbers of people wanting to enter Britain from the enlarged EU and elsewhere, and so another problem will be solved?

What to make of it?

Whatever is going on, there are three things I conclude.

First, the running down of our health service which was once the envy of the world needs to be seen as part of God’s judgement on a godless nation. Here we are, meant to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but we can’t even run our own hospital system properly. The nation has made money and mammon its god, and as with all idols, God ensures they fail us.

Second, partially at least, the undermining of the NHS must go back to a rejection of Christian values in our land — especially the nobility of service to others. Secular society inevitably implies that service is a mug’s game. If there is only this life, then you had better concentrate on enjoying yourself, not slopping out bedpans, etc.

Many experienced Christian nurses observe with sadness that the profession they entered years ago with a heart to care, has now become obsessed with personal career advance and targets, rather than making patients comfortable.

But, thirdly and more positively, as the fight is on to save local hospitals, it gives local churches the opportunity to join in where they can and offer support to their communities. This would not only be a right ‘loving your neighbour’ action, it might even lead to fruitful evangelistic openings.

Goodbye hospital?

Conspiracy theories

What to make of it?

John Benton

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