Kevin McNally Workers Party Representative for East Belfast has challenged those political parties to provide the evidence that that shows waiting list times have improved because of the heavy investment in the Private companies .

Mr McNally said over the past few days there has been much talk about the Bengo reforms and how we must ensure they are implemented . There would seem to be collective amnesia around the failed forerunner transforming your care which was abandoned because of public outcry but sadly not before serious damaged was inflicted on our health and social care services. The wholesale privatisation of home care services and residential and nursing homes was a primary cause as was the bed closures, staffing cuts, and the deliberate decision to recruit staff through agencies as a covert and costly way of depleting permanent staff numbers.

The Workers Party has been opposing the introduction of the Bengo Reforms since the consultation period because it contains all the same core principles of Transforming Your Care. The privatisation and fragmentation of health and social care, centralised services when it comes to hospital services and an even greater say for senior medical staff and managers, it also wants wants to introduce performance related pay for those who deliver those reforms.

Bengo offers nothing in the way of dealing with our major health inequalities or its core reasons which is generational poverty, poor housing, lack of employment and all the other deprivations faced by the working-class. Bengo whilst paying lip service to these issues, offers no realistic solutions, in fact its implementation will lead to an even greater crisis and will sound the death knell of our National Health Service. Our politicians have been much to eager to allow planning permission for large corporations to build private health care facilities and this trend has gone largely unchallenged by elected representatives.

Northern Ireland has the highest rates of health inequalities and poverty in western Europe, west Belfast, North Belfast, East Belfast, and pockets of South Belfast, Newry and Armagh, and Derry City, yet , our politicians are still demanding that Bengo be implemented in full. The question must now be asked, whose interests are they representing, it is certainly not their own constituents, or the citizens of Northern Ireland. It is time to stop Bengo and have a serious inclusive debate about delivering high quality health and social care services, based on its founding principles.