By Martin Shaw - Independent East Devon Alliance County Councillor for Seaton & Colyton

As the pandemic is being brought under the control, thoughts are turning to what happens next.

I was shocked to hear NHS managers telling Devon's Health Scrutiny Committee recently that they expected to be back under tight budget constraints soon.

But now the Chancellor has confirmed that all the additional expenditure for the NHS will be shut off later this year.

This seems profoundly short-sighted. The threat of another wave of infection (perhaps from a partially vaccine-resistant variant), the health problems of people with 'Long COVID', and the need for a huge catch-up programme for non-COVID patients whose treatments have been postponed, all point to the need for a big upgrade to the NHS.

These issues are posed particularly sharply in the South West, where we have a large elderly population.

In Seaton now, 43 per cent of the population are over 65, up from 40 per cent four years ago, and almost the largest proportion of any town in England.

At this rate, by the end of the decade half our population will be pensioners.

Bad crisis averted

We also started the pandemic with the worst provision of hospital beds in the country.

We've been very lucky that we've been behind the curve of infection in both waves, so that the lockdowns, while too late for the national situation, have been just in time to shut down the local waves.

A really bad crisis of the Devon NHS has been averted, but its staff have still risked their lives and worked themselves to the bone.

We won't necessarily be so fortunate in future pandemics, which experts warn will come.

We need to build up our health system and pay NHS staff properly. People say there is no money but there has been plenty to pay for expensive consultants in the privatised tracing system, which hasn't performed as well as the NHS.

The government borrowed money to fight the Second World War and took 70 years to pay it off. Borrowing is currently cheap and they should do the same for the NHS in this unprecedented crisis.

In an expanded NHS, more services should be local. When I stood to be Seaton and Colyton's County Councillor four years ago, people voted for me because they knew I would defend Seaton's Community Hospital to the hilt.

It's proved its value in the vaccination programme and deserves to be fully used for the long term.

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