Showing posts with label Keep Our NHS Public. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keep Our NHS Public. Show all posts

Thursday 2 December 2021

People's Covid Inquiry accuses government of gross negligence

 


 From Keep Our NHS Public



People’s Covid Inquiry chair Michael Mansfield QC, said:

This People’s Covid Inquiry report is unequivocal – dismal failure in the face of manifestly obvious risks…This Inquiry performed a much-needed and urgent public service when the nation was hit by a catastrophic pandemic coincident with an unprecedented period of democratic deficiency. It afforded an opportunity for the beleaguered citizen to be heard; for the victims to be addressed; for the frontline workers to be recognised; and for independent experts to be respected. When it mattered most and when lives could have been saved, the various postures adopted by government could not sustain scrutiny.

It was plain to Keep Our NHS Public (the organisers of the People’s Covid Inquiry) that Government words were bloated hot air, hoping to delay and obfuscate. Within this narrative lies a theme of behaviour amounting to gross negligence by the Government, whether examined singularly or collectively. There were lives lost and lives devastated, which was foreseeable and preventable. From lack of preparation and coherent policy, unconscionable delay, through to preferred and wasteful procurement, to ministers themselves breaking the rules, the misconduct is earth-shattering.

 

Dr Tony O’Sullivan, Co-Chair of Keep Our NHS Public and retired Consultant Paediatrician, said:

 

We are proud that our Inquiry filled the deafening silence from Government and set out to learn the lessons that could save lives in this and future pandemics. We are shocked at the avoidable loss of tens of thousands of lives through the neglect of pandemic planning, the run down of the NHS, and the intense inequality in this country. We heard the pride of NHS, care and other frontline staff and we heard about their pain, exhaustion and moral injury. The level of government cronyism and resultant profiteering has been blatant and in plain sight. Our overall conclusion is that there has been misconduct in public office. This has to be addressed. If we ignore it, the country cannot learn the lessons from today to face the challenge of tomorrow.

 

The pandemic is not over, and despite previous improvements, infection rates and death tolls are once again rising. As winter approaches and the Omicron Variant takes hold, the government must act now or more avoidable deaths will occur.

With political will and public support, there is no reason we can’t still emerge from the pandemic with an NHS that is not on the brink of collapse as it is now, but having learned lessons, gained experience, and seen proper investment in a publicly provided health-and-care service, in order to keep the nation safe as and when another crisis like this occurs.

The Executive Summary and the Full Report of the People’s Covid Inquiry is available to download here.

Friday 19 November 2021

Friday 9 July 2021

Why you should oppose the Health & Care Bill - Keep Our NHS Public

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/339224764333387/

 Statement from Keep Our NHS Public

The Health and Care Bill will be launched this week, as Prime Minister Johnson overrules his new Health Secretary and Covid cases soar. KONP calls for widespread public opposition to the Bill, and for MPs and Lords to vote against it at every opportunity. The Bill will break the national NHS into 42 separate “Integrated Care Systems” (ICS), each with its own tight budget forcing cuts in care. Local NHS provision will be tied to a plan written by the ICS Board, open to the private sector, dragging local authorities into a financial project without real democratic accountability or public control.

The Bill will be promoted as an end to privatisation. It is the opposite, a transition to an unregulated market in healthcare. The Government is responsible for delaying lockdowns in March 2020 and before Christmas, untested discharges to spread infection into care homes, key workers dying without adequate PPE, failure to stop the Delta variant when it first appeared, exhausted and demoralised healthcare staff and150,000 deaths.

Despite this appalling list of errors, it claims the Bill is based on its record of pandemic management and points the way forward for the NHS as a whole. In practice this will mean unbridled collaboration with the private sector, openly celebrated by Matt Hancock before his fall, and certain to be endorsed by former banker and Chancellor, now Health Secretary Sajid Javid, and by the Prime Minister’s NHS advisors including the former CEO of Operose, the UK branch of US health insurance giant Centene, Samantha Jones. Already, some 200 firms, at least 30 of them US-owned and prominent in the health insurance market, are accredited to support the development and ongoing management of ICSs. They include Operose (which now controls dozens of GP surgeries and community services), Optum (owned by the largest US health insurance firm UnitedHealth), IBM, and Palantir.

As money drains from healthcare to shareholders, what will it mean for patients, and for NHS staff whose wellbeing is essential if they are to provide effective care?

For patients:

●more companies given access to confidential patient information, with no clear protection for patient privacy

●more digital services, creating a two-tier health service, depending on whether you’re able to make use of computers or smart phones

●fewer face-to face appointments with GPs, and less chance of seeing the same health worker

●more patient care given by less qualified (cheaper) staff, directed by computers and manuals

●growing expectation that patients will ‘self-care’, using phone apps or websites for advice or information

●more risk that services will be cut or rationed, and non-urgent referrals to hospital delayed or refused because of pressure on ICSs to make savings

●faster discharge from hospital, with family carers expected to take on more unpaid care due to lack of community services

For staff

●threat to national agreements on pay, terms and conditions as each ICS Board will have their own limited budget and seek to cut costs ●flexible working, with staff redeployed across and even beyond the ICS area, undermining team working, union organisation, continuity of care, and bad for the environment with increased travel

●deregulation, as nursing and other jobs are advertised to candidates without the right qualifications

●deregulation, as the Secretary of State will have the power to remove jobs from regulation -supposedly justified by new technology but actually risking harm to patients and interfering with professional judgement and staff development.

For democratic accountability and Local Authorities

● the Secretary of State for Health will assume decision making power to impose local service reconfigurations

● the right and power of scrutiny by local authorities of significant health changes will be weakened or abolished

● the right of access by the public to board meetings and papers may also be threatened

For legal protections

●exempting the NHS from the Public Contract Regulations 2015 will remove the right to reject bids on the grounds of non-compliance with environmental, social, or labour laws (ILO conventions guaranteeing Freedom of Association and the Right to Strike), and on the basis of a bidder’s track record.

During the pandemic, the government dished out over 3000 covid contracts, many of them without tendering, some to companies whose only qualification was being mates with a Minister.

That is the Brave New World the government plans for the NHS as a whole. The threats to staff should ring alarm bells for every trade union with members in the NHS, and the threats to patients should concern us all. Let’s stop this Bill now.


Friday 2 July 2021

Nearly 40 years on the Brent battle for the NHS continues as new campaign set up - join the protest tomorrow

 


Nearly 40 years on  from the above, the battle for our NHS continues.  Last night was the inaugral meeting of Brent Keep Our NHS Public part of a national campaign against privatisation of the Health Service. Last night, as in 1982, it was supported by some Brent councillors (I am not sure if there is official backing from Brent Council itself).

Cllr Neil Nerva, Lead member for Public Health, Culture and Leisure,  introducing the Trades Council sponsored meeting said that on the doorstep there was currently more concern about  access to NHS services than privatisation, but went on to list the various threats from privatisation. Cllr Janice Long said that not only was it important that this was a cross party campaign but that it should reach a much broader audience.  She said it was important to keep the message simple and was doubtful about the effectiveness of Patient Participation Groups, but GP Jonathan Flaxman urged people to get involved with them to overcome the powerlessness of patients. Cllr Ihtesham Afzal urged more street protests: There is one tomorrow:

 


 Other councillors who attended were Cllrs Thakker, McLennan, Dar, Kabir and Hylton along with Trades Council members and other activists.

If you would like to join the campaign email:  brentkonp@yahoo.com

 A website will be set up soon.

Saturday 26 June 2021

Stepping up the campaign for the NHS in Brent on its 73rd anniversary - important events next week

 

Next Saturday, July 3rd there will be local demonstrations across the country in support of the NHS and its workers.  The Brent demonstration will be a static demonstration outside the Willesden Centre for Health and Care.

There is also a Central London demonstration outside UCL Hospital on the Euston Road starting at 11.45am.

 

Ahead of the demonstration there will be a meeting on July 1st to relaunch the Brent branch of Keep our NHS Public with Cllr Janice Long, Cllr Neil Nerva  and Dr Jonathan Fluxman speaking.

Brent KONP Time: 1st Jul 2021  17:30h Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84178644772?pwd=bExBR1VVak1zZFlzb1plUmdUYTlmQT09

Meeting ID: 841 7864 4772  Passcode: 923609

The Green Party at its most recent conference passed a motion in support of the NHS pay claim for a 15% restorative pay award and the Green Party Trade Union Group  held a useful  briefing on how to support the NHS15 campaign and the background to the threat to the NHS.


Monday 15 February 2021

A Trojan Horse? Keep Our NHS Public examine the government's Integrated care proposals

The case for Integrated Care seems obvious - who could be against integration it if improves the care of citizens? Keep Our NHS Public look beyond the initial favourable reception of the proposals and examine the prospect of them opening up the potential for more private involvement in the NHS LINK

FROM KEEP OUR NHS PUBLIC

In the middle of the Covid pandemic, when the NHS and its staff are going flat out to cope, NHS England (NHSE) is stealthily transforming the NHS again. What is portrayed as an innocuous move to ‘integrate’ care and reduce bureaucracy will, in effect, move decision-making even further from local communities and increase the presence and influence of the private sector in the NHS.

At the moment, the main tools for this transformation are Integrated Care Systems (ICSs), supported by plans for new legislative powers.  Although ICSs are already in place in some parts of England, a new document from NHSE provides the clearest glimpse so far of what ICSs could mean.

The proposals, recently echoed in a government White Paper, are of huge concern. Although seen by the media as suggesting the role of the private sector will be reduced, the proposed legislation, if passed, will enact the current government’s wish to further fragment, destabilise and privatise our NHS.

Background

Regulations brought in by the Health and Social Care Act (HSCA) of 2012 enforced a new competitive ‘market’ within the NHS.  The Act also introduced Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) that were required to put clinical and other services out to competitive tender and so allowed increased private company involvement in the NHS.

Since then, while still retaining the market system, NHSE has declared that competition is to be replaced by the “integration” of NHS, local authority and other service providers. NHSE’s ‘integration’ has involved fragmenting the NHS into 44 areas (originally called ‘Sustainability and Transformation Plans’) destined to eventually morph into 42 Integrated Care Systems. The NHS Long Term Plan requires every NHS organisation and their local ‘partners’ to become part of an ICS by April of this year.

What are ICSs?

According to NHSE, ICSs are bodies in which

“NHS organisations, in partnership with local councils and others, take collective responsibility for managing resources, delivering NHS standards, and improving the health of the population they serve.”

The ‘others’ they refer to include private companies. An ICS will have a ‘single pot’ budget and its partners will collectively decide how to delegate that budget to loosely defined local “places” within the ICS.

Legislative change

The powers of ICSs are currently under review. NHSE argues that existing law, such as the HSCA (2012), does not provide a sufficiently firm foundation for the work of ICSs, so they propose scrapping Section 75 of the Act, which, for example, requires commissioners to put any contract worth over £.615,278 out to tender. They have also sought views on two options for enshrining ICSs in legislation.

Both options provide an ICS Board and a single ICS Accountable Officer. In one option, there would be a single Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), along with a new duty for providers, such as NHS Trusts, to comply with the ICS plan. In the second option, NHSE’s preference, CCGs would be ‘repurposed’, whatever that means, and their commissioning functions transferred to the ICS Board. While the veto of individual organisations within the ICS would be removed, the ICS could delegate responsibility for arranging some services to providers “to create much greater scope for provider collaboration”.

What are the main issues for campaigners?

ICSs raise multiple issues but we focus on three main areas: the increased potential they offer for private companies to profiteer from the NHS; the unequal partnership they create with local authorities and the subsequent threat to social care and public health services; and the loss of accountability.

  • Increased scope for private companies

Removing Section 75 of the HSCA (2012), by itself, won’t reverse the marketisation of the NHS. Worse still, it would involve revoking Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition Regulations, so turning the NHS into an unregulated market.

The proposals also recommend that NHS services be removed from the scope of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, allowing commissioners more discretion when procuring services. It means that ICSs would be able to choose whether to award a contract directly to a provider or go through a more formal procurement process. Such flexibility massively increases opportunities for cronyism, as shown during the Covid pandemic when emergency measures allowed the usual procurement rules to be bypassed.  For example, the National Audit Office found that during the early stages of the Covid crisis, companies with ‘connections’ (for instance with government officials, MPs, or senior NHS staff), were ten times more likely to be awarded a contract than those without such links – even if they were entirely unsuitable suppliers.

The possibility that ICSs, operating in a market system, can chose to dispense with formal procurement processes is additionally alarming as NHSE wants to give each ICS a free hand in appointing its governing Board. This means that these Boards could include representatives from private providers – a move that’s described as “a blatant undermining of the ICS as an NHS body”.

The way that ICSs are to be internally managed will also increase privatisation. NHSE has accredited 83 companies to provide support for developing and managing ICSs through what’s known as the Health Systems Support Framework (HSSF). In the words of NHSE,

“The Health Systems Support (HSS) Framework provides a quick and easy route to access support services from innovative third party suppliers at the leading edge of health and care system reform”.

These companies, as you might guess, include McKinsey, Deloitte, Optum, IBM, Ernst and Young, Centene, and other global corporations, along with some UK and European companies, and a handful of NHS Commissioning Support Units.

The HSSF is divided into 10 ‘Lots’ covering services such as patient record systems, transformation and change support, capacity planning support, patient empowerment, and digital tools to support system planning. As NHSE points out,

“The Framework focuses particularly on services that can support the move to integrated models of care based on intelligence-led population health management. This includes new digital and technological advances that help clinicians and managers understand a population’s health and how it can best be managed.” (Our emphasis)

Population health management (PHM) is described by NHSE as “an approach aimed at improving the health of an entire population and improves population health by data driven planning and delivery of care to achieve maximum impact for the population.”

Briefly, PHM (“the critical building block for integrated care systems”) relies heavily on the mass collection and analysis of data from across multiple care settings, and a shift from care provided by clinicians face-to-face, to much more digitally provided care via remote consultations and algorithms. This inevitably means more private sector involvement due to the capital investment required for digital infrastructure, not to mention increased access to patient data for tech companies.

In addition, PHM shifts the focus of the NHS from delivering universal comprehensive care to individuals towards achieving data targets for the population covered by the ICS. Depending of course on how, and by whom, and with what aim, those data targets are set, what’s “good” for the population may be at odds with the needs of an individual.

  • The threat to social care and public health services

ICSs are an essential part of a shift towards a ‘place-based approach’ to health and social care, with ‘place’ often seen as coterminous with local authority (LA) boundaries. According to the NHS Confederation, this level of working is the right scale for tackling ‘population health challenges’, such as health inequalities. A ‘place based approach’ is also part of a shift towards PHM, as well as shared responsibility for resources and service changes across all public services within the area.

NHSE proposals suggest that ICSs become the means for more ‘integration’ between the NHS and LAs. However, in its response to NHSE’s proposals, the Local Government Association (the national voice for local government) raises concerns that ICSs won’t be a partnership of equals across the broader health, wellbeing, and social care system. Instead, ICSs will be NHS-led, allowing a power grab that brings LA resources such as capital assets and funding for social care and public health under ICS (and thus NHS) control. There is also a risk that power won’t be devolved to local systems. Rather, central control will remain, with missed opportunities for real collaboration between the NHS and LAs to address the wider determinants of health, such as affordable housing and a safe environment.

Further, KONP among others has highlighted the risks posed by NHS management of social care. Social care is not an adjunct of the NHS, but has a very wide remit that overlaps with wider local authority responsibilities including housing, leisure, planning and education. In addition, social care is means tested while NHS care is (largely) free at the point of use and funded by taxation. If ICSs take on social care, they will have to develop complicated charging mechanisms. This could pave the way to charges for NHS services or, long term, for the introduction of a private insurance-based system (facilitated, incidentally, by the extensive data sets created by PHM). NHSE’s proposals also fail to mention any safeguards to prevent services that are currently free from being redefined as social care and so subject to means testing.

  • Loss of accountability

 In contrast to local authorities, ICSs are not subject to democratic control. NHSE’s proposals will give them the power to create publicly unaccountable joint committees, potentially including representatives from private business, to make legally binding decisions about major resource allocation and service provision.  (For KONP’s vision for achieving democratic accountability, see here.)

CCGs, with their responsibility to manage local budgets, will be weakened or, as NHSE would prefer, abolished. In the absence of any plans to make ICSs accountable to local residents or patients, it seems that people over large areas of England will be disenfranchised. Although ICS Boards will supplant existing public bodies, there appears to be no requirement for them to meet in public, publish their Board papers and minutes, be subject to the Freedom of Information Act, or to have any democratic participation from the communities they cover.

What can we do?

KONP calls for a halt to the development of ICSs until there is a full consultation with the public, local authorities and Parliament. It argues that not just Section 75 but the entire Health and Social Care Act (2012) should be repealed and the NHS Reinstatement Bill laid before Parliament. This proposes restoring the NHS as an accountable public service; ending contracting and the purchaser-provider split; and re-establishing public bodies and public accountability to local communities.

We call on Councillors and MPs to be briefed in detail on the issues before legislation is tabled, and to be ready to challenge it.

We call on activists to make these issues a campaign focus, before legislation is tabled.

Wednesday 19 February 2014

How to opt out of the NHS care data scheme

At a meeting last night I couldn't find anyone who had received their letter about the sharing of individual's medical data so it is good news that implementation has been delayed for six months.

There are concerns about the security of the system and its possible misuse. This was discussed in the Guardian 18 months ago: LINK

If you decide you want to opt out of the system, which is your right, Fax Your GP Com LINK have set uo an easy facility. This is what they say:

We’re a very small group of volunteers who think it should be very easy for people to opt out of the new NHS care.data centralised database of medical records.

Unless you opt out now, care.data will soon store the medical records of everyone in England, yours included, in one giant database.

Our confidential health information will then be shared with companies and other public bodies.

Some people we respect think care.data is, on balance, a good thing.
Some people we respect think care.data is, on balance, a bad thing.

What we know for certain is that the NHS hasn’t made it easy for you to exercise your right to opt out. We think this really isn’t wise.

The NHS leaflet explaining care.data says you should ‘let your GP know’ if you want to opt out.
But GP surgeries are busy. If you ring up wanting to opt out they’ll ask you to write to them instead. That’s fair enough – their priority is treating the sick.

It’s 2014. The NHS really should have made it easy to opt out via the web.
So we thought we’d help out.

First, we found the fax numbers for every GP practice (sadly, very few let you email them). After you’ve entered your details, our clever computers automatically fax your letter asking to opt-out of the care.data database straight to your GP practice.

It’s free. It’s secure. And we don’t store any of your personal data once your opt-out fax has been received by your GP. So we won’t email trying to sign you up for other campaigns.

Sadly we can’t make any 100% watertight promises that this site will always work. Your GP’s fax number might be listed incorrectly on the NHS website, for example.

So if you want total reassurance, it might be best to print out an opt out letter and pop it round to your GP yourself.

However, we have done this sort of thing before, and so know it works well. Back in 1999/2000 some of us built FaxYourMP.com, to make it easy for people to contact their MP, since in those days most MPs didn’t publish their email addresses. A bit like GPs, today, in fact.

We didn’t expect to have to resurrect a similar service nearly 15 years later. Frankly, we shouldn’t have had to, but needs must.

— Stef Magdalinski and friends.

The Keep Our NHS Public leaflet downloadable below contains an opt-out letter you can take to your GP:


Sunday 28 July 2013

Bennett: 5 steps to restore the NHS to the proud state Bevan intended


Green Party leader Natalie Bennett has identified a series of actions that need to be taken to save and restore our publicly owned and publicly run NHS.

Bennett was speaking at the Call 999 for the NHS rally in Darlington yesterday, organised by a concerned group of local campaigners.

She focused particularly on the need to pass Lord Owen's Bill to restore the duty of the Secretary of State to provide healthcare, and on the need to allow commissioners to choose "preferred providers", removing the pressure to put services out to tender.

Here is the full speech:

I have to begin, by congratulating the organiser of this rally, Joanna Adams. She’s demonstrated what one person can achieve when they say ‘I’m not going to take this any more’.

And congratulations to you for being hear to listen, on this glorious sunny day when the park looks so attractive.

Earlier this year, I came down with labyrinthitis, an infection of the inner ear. It isn’t a serious condition, but it is a rather dramatic one. The world suddenly started to spin wildly, and I found myself in the Green Party office, head down on the desk, unable to move.

An ambulance was called, and I was carted down in the lift and out of the office on a stretcher. As I lay on the trolley in that ambulance, a kind officer offering reassurance while filling in her paperwork, one political thought did flash through my head – “at least I’m not in America”.

I didn’t have to think about the cost of the ambulance, the cost of the high-tech tests to check I hadn’t had a stroke or didn’t have a brain tumour. I didn’t have to think of the cost of drugs, or have to leave hospital before I felt ready because of the bills.

So I was thinking – thank Nye Bevan for the NHS, for the principle, fought for and won more than six decades ago, of treatment on the basis of need, free at the point of use.

And, later, when the world had stopped spinning, I thought again, often, of how important it is to defend it.
In common with many healthcare experts, I could see even before it came into effect that the Tory-Lib Dem government’s Health and Social Care Bill was the gravest threat that the NHS had ever known.

I, with the rest of the Green Party, joined the campaign against the pernicious Bill, and Green MP Caroline Lucas voted against it.

And we pointed out the democratic deficit: that voters had not been presented with this option in any party manifesto, and that 70 MPs and 142 peers - a significant proportion of those voting on the bill - have or have had financial interests in private health care companies. (And of course we’ve seen an increasing revolving door between private sector executives and senior public administrators.)

But on that day in January, on the ambulance trolley, the campaign had a new, real, intensity for me.
It has become horrifically, horribly clear since the Bill was passed and begun to be put into effect that the worst fears of  experts like the Royal College of General Practitioners and Unison who had opposed the now Act were entirely correct.

We’ve seen an acceleration of the already extensive privatisation of health services that began in the Thatcher era and was embraced wholesale by the last Labour government.  A privatisation that saw more than 100 NHS PFI schemes signed off, with projects valued at £11 billion, and index-linked contracts which are already bankrupting NHS Trusts. (As many as 70 of these are now owned off-shore, meaning the profits are beyond the reach of British tax.)

The NHS spent £8.7 billion on private medical services last year, out of a total budget of £104 billion and that figure is expected to rise fast.  As we heard only this morning from the Guardian, the “biggest privatisation yet” is set to see a single contract worth £1.1bn let for “care for older people including end of life care” in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.

And the existing NHS services are highly unlikely to be able to bid for it. Virgin, Serco or Circle, the usual roll call, are expected to bid to make profits out of care for older people.

The former Labour Government explicitly embraced competition, arguing that it was needed to make NHS providers more productive - the "grit in the oyster" argument.  But in fact, there’s strong evidence that  cooperation, not competition,  delivers the best, most cost-effective, results for patients.

Furthermore, efficiency savings were imposed on the NHS by way of the "Nicholson Challenge" and Labour didn't commit to maintaining real term health spending increases in the 2010 election.  The current government has risen to this so-called challenge with relish, overseeing  £20 billion  of  “efficiency savings” that are really just a transparent fig leaf for cuts.

We’ve seen a huge push towards private-style structures – particularly “foundation trusts” -  in the public hospitals built with public funds and often also large charitable donations.

But there’s even worse on the horizon. The drive to soften up the public for “co-payments” – to end the “free at the point of use” principle that is the most essential NHS principle at all – has clearly begun.

In April, Malcolm Grant, chair of NHS England, said he personally wouldn’t support charging for NHS services. But then went on to say: “It’s something which a future government will wish to reflect [on], unless the economy has picked up sufficiently, because we can anticipate demand for NHS services rising.”

That idea was backed by leader articles in the Financial Times and  Daily Telegraph, which also reflected on the supposed “inevitability” of charging for NHS services. This week we saw a survey of GPs encouraging the idea.

BUT – it’s not too late. It’s important to say that loudly and clearly.

The public is increasingly concerned about the state, and fate, of our NHS, despite concerted campaigns to run it down.

We’ve seen a clear attempt to stigmatise, to smear, to attack, the NHS.  Clearly, there are problems – some related to privatisation and the managerialism brought in by Labour to facilitiate it – Private Eye pointed out this week that all of the hospitals identified as problematic either were foundation trusts or were seeking that status. Some of the problems are related to underfunding, and some related to real problems of management and organisation. And they cause reasonable concern.

But it’s also clear that the public fears that privatisation – the introduction of the profit motive into the NHS – is undermining the very principles and  future of their health service. And they are right!

And so there are five clear steps that we can – and must - take.

First, we must back the National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill proposed by Lord Owen in the House of Lords.

Most importantly, in Clause 1, the Bill restores the Secretary of State for Health’s duty to provide the NHS in England. (This duty was abolished in 2012 – with responsibility to determine what is provided free transferred to the new clinical commissioning groups, which have no public accountability.)

This clause will also restore the duty to promote a comprehensive and integrated service, which the Coalition split between the NHS Commissioning Board, clinical commissioning groups, Monitor, and Health and Wellbeing Boards.

Second, we must allow commissioners to use a public “preferred provider”, rather than forcing them to put services out to tender and they must be allowed to make decisions in the public interest without being called ant-competitive. After all, we know that  private companies – not just multinational healthcare
companies but also giant feeders at the public teat such as G4S, A4E, Atos, Serco, Virgin, Circle - can demonstrate their one great skill and competitive advantage: the ability to make attractive bids for contracts, yet  as we’ve all too often found to our cost, they are not always so successful at delivering on them.

Third, we can encourage patients to give their GPs notes or postcards, as provided by the Keep Our NHS Public campaign, expressing their preference for being treated by public rather than private providers whenever this is possible.

Fourth, we must demand health funding is maintained. Spending on health fell in real terms by 0.7% in 2010 and a further 1.2% in 2011. This must not be forgotten, especially after the Coalition promised to protect NHS spending from cuts.

Finally, we must challenge every person or organisation that pushes us down the slippery slope towards “co-payments”.

We only have to look to the United States of America to see what we must avoid. We don’t want to mimic a health system that costs 18% of the GDP of the world’s wealthiest country, yet puts the US 17th out of 17 developed countries when ranked on the state of its national health.

We don’t want to emulate a system where vast profits are made by a few giant companies, which want to cherry pick the easy patients, the simple operations and conditions, while driving staff wages down and down, and leaving patients with complex needs and needing high-cost treatments stranded.

And above all we don’t want to copy a system where your access to the best health care, be it a good local GP or a specialist cancer surgeon, is determined by your ability to pay, or by a private healthcare provider’s decision on whether you meet its criteria for treatment.

We have a system which has worked – provided excellent health care free at the point of use – for 67 years. We do not want a system in which the standard of healthcare is dictated by cash, where those able to pay more are simply less likely to die than those who cannot afford to.

Let’s join together and say NO.

Let’s restore our publicly owned and publicly operated health system to the proud state that Nye Bevan intended – the health service that was established to give every Briton the best possible health care, local to them, when they need it, driven by a philosophy of care, not profit.

That’s what the Green Party believes in, what we are fighting for and what we have the genuine principles to deliver. And I know many other individuals and organisations will too. Let’s join together to rescue the NHS, and win. The principle of publicly provided healthcare free at the point of use is just too precious to lose.

Sunday 4 September 2011

NHS Demonstration and Vigil on Health Bill

Click on image to enlarge
Brent Fightback will be supporting an urgent call for action as the government try to push the Health Bill through parliament. There will be a demonstration and march from St Thomas Hospital, Lambeth Palace Road to Parliament, assembling at the hospital at 6.30pm and then a Torchlight Vigil outside Parliament at 9.30pm. MAP If you can help with leafleting for the demonstrations please meet at the cafe just inside the main entrance of Central Middlesex hospital at noon tomorrow (Monday).

See below for legal advice that proves we are right to be concerned that the Bill still threatens the very existence of the National Health Service and important information about how you can help.

We can make a real difference as some Liberal Democrats threaten a rebellion. Meanwhile the government tries to hold the line and submits a deluge of name change amendments.

Legal advice shows we are right
Independent legal advice with funding from 38 degrees shows our concerns about the future of the NHS are right- see more information here: 
Email your MP with the legal advice here:

How lobbying a Lord can make a difference
If the Bill is passed in the commons next week it will then pass to the Lords. Lords are not used to being lobbied so we need to show them how it’s done! Take the time to lobby one here:

Shirley Williams has said she will take account of the size of her post bag so you might want to email or write to her! Ruth Rendell speaks out here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/aug/30/ruth-rendell-attacks-public-spending-cuts

Other useful links