A recently published report from the Royal College of Nursing paints a grim portrait of the advanced decay affecting the NHS today.
The report, On the frontline of the UK’s corridor care crisis, contains accounts from 5,000 RCN members detailing the use of corridors, car parks, cupboards, bathrooms, and nursing stations as makeshift areas for treating patients.
There is no shortage of harrowing experiences. One worker shockingly recalls:
“Every day there are 4 extra patients in the corridor of the ward against the wall. I also saw a patient, where there were 7 or 8 in a bay instead of 6. The extra patient’s bed was virtually next to the other patient, so no privacy.
“We were unable to access the patient from both sides of the bed, there were not enough sockets for pumps to be connected. Not enough oxygen points for each bed. In an emergency/cardiac arrest one of the beds would need to be pulled out into the middle of the bay.”
Other accounts include patients in the middle of corridors having incontinence pads changed; suffering miscarriages; and even dying on trolleys and beds.
The RCN general secretary Nicola Ranger stated that the report should act as a “wake-up call” for Labour.
“Nursing in this country is in a crisis”
Chief Executive of the Royal College of Nursing Professor Nicola Ranger tells #BBCLauraK that the workforce is a “missing piece” in the government’s plans for NHS reformhttps://t.co/A1kCxfYTtu pic.twitter.com/Tge53RdBa5
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) January 5, 2025
But rather than waking up, Labour’s health secretary Wes Streeting has merely tried to deflect blame on his Tory predecessors, blaming the horrors detailed in this report as “a cruel consequence of 14 years of failure on the NHS”.
No doubt the hundreds of patients agonising in hospital corridors will find consolation in Streeting’s careless blame game.
But so far, with his dystopian ‘Jabs-for-Jobs’ scheme, and his plans for “bulldozing bureaucracy” (read: cutting clinical and admin staff instead of managers and executives), the health secretary seems to be all too ready to repeat the Tory’s failures!
Streeting claims that resolving the NHS crisis will “take time”. This is no doubt the case, following decades of cuts, privatisation, and neglect. But the grim reality is that, faced with the present catastrophe, Streeting has nothing to offer but a ‘wait-and-see’ approach.
In fact, it is no secret that the health secretary has long advocated for carving up the NHS and selling off the parts to the highest bidder. NHS staff and patients can’t trust a word that comes out of his lying mouth.
Bold measures needed
Ultimately, fixing the NHS will require a whole overhaul on numerous fronts – not just tinkering around the edges. We need investment in frontline staff’s pay, new hospitals, new machines, new local practices, and all the staff recruitment that goes alongside these measures.

Labour’s sleepy response to these pressing issues reflects their lack of strategy for such an overhaul in the long term. But such bold measures are impossible while Labour’s hands are shackled by big business – and it will not be Starmer’s government that breaks those chains!
Labour have been playing a balancing act with the NHS, giving a little more funding here and there, proposing cuts elsewhere, and offering below-inflation pay rises. All the while, they are looking for ways to fling the doors open to the private sector.
Clearly, the Labour party is caught in a bind. On one hand, the NHS is incredibly costly, and is a drag on the disastrous state of the government’s finances which they’d rather be rid of.
But on the other hand, Starmer’s government can feel the pressure from both NHS staff – who are at the end of their tether – and the wider public, who still treasure the NHS as a gain to be defended. What’s more, cabinet ministers can see that Britain’s ill-health is a major drag on the economy.
In reality, the money exists to put the NHS back on its feet and realise the vision of a top-quality, totally free public health service – but it sits in the accounts of the biggest monopolies and banks.
If we expropriate the pharmaceutical giants and all other private profiteers that leach off the NHS, huge strides could be made in the right direction. But until such bold measures are taken, the NHS will continue to ail in the corridors of British capitalism.
Letter from a care worker: Dementia patients left to suffer
I work for a company that assists in the running of NHS services. We run care homes, children’s centres, community care initiatives, etc. Like the NHS, we are mostly supported by government funding.
This week, I overheard something shocking from a colleague.
She shared that due to “budgeting issues”, our CIC has axed the specialist dementia care team. This team worked mostly with complex or severe dementia cases, in a care home setting.
Even worse, due to these cuts, local care homes are now starting to refuse new dementia patients, as there is now no team to support their care.
It is devastating to think of these vulnerable individuals rejected back into the community, unsupported and alone. Even if they have family…how can somebody without proper training provide full time, complex care?
And this is only the start of a domino effect. These patients will likely be admitted into hospital for a fall, yet after recovering, they will remain on the ward, as despite being medically fit for discharge, there are no care homes to discharge them into.
According to the British Medical Association, up to one in three hospital beds in England are occupied by patients in this situation.
So, the NHS has less beds, waiting times increase, A&Es are overwhelmed and understaffed, hospital staff are exhausted and traumatised…
Such is the harrowing reality of health and social care under capitalism. The only way to protect our most vulnerable, and those caring for them, is the worker’s revolution!
Lucy S, Nottingham
Letter from a doctor: Blair should be behind bars
It seems that more and more war criminals are coming out of the woodwork these days.
In a recent LBC interview, Tony Blair lamented the rise in disability benefit costs and accused workers of ‘medicalising’ the “ups and downs” of life as self-diagnosed depression.
Blair was the architect of NHS privatisation and austerity, which has seen a 30% drop in the number of mental health beds in the country and mental health services stretched incredibly thin. That’s not a self-diagnosis, that’s fact.
Capitalism crushes workers physically and mentall

y – we are overworked, underpaid, drowning in debt and living in a society that is literally falling apart.
Disability benefits are not handed out generously either; those who receive them can barely get by, while many face cruel sanctions for missing a single appointment. Not to mention the countless sick days taken by workers due to burnout and stress.
It’s no surprise that Blair is blaming workers for their own mental health crises. If he was held accountable for the mass trauma he inflicted on the Iraqi people alone, he’d be behind bars for the rest of his life!
Reema Malhotra, NHS doctor