NHS and health

Labour movement activists are organising a lobby of Labour Party conference at the end of September to demand Labour commits to reversing the Tories’ NHS “reforms” and rebuilding our health services. As the Tories’ NHS Health and Social Care Act and their cuts are implemented, there will be numerous local struggles — to stop closures, defend services and resist the expansion of privatisation. Such struggles are vital; they are the essential material from which a more powerful movement to defend the NHS will be built. At the same time, we cannot defend the health service piecemeal. We need to...

The National Health Service was officially launched at Park Hospital in Davyhulme on 5 July 1948 by Health Secretary Nye Bevan. As he symbolically received the keys to the hospital, Bevan was conscious of the place the hospital would occupy in Britain’s history. Now, 64 years later, NHS bosses have been planning in secret to close it. Earlier this year the hospital was taken over from local managers by the Central Manchester Foundation Trust because they said the hospital’s finances are “unviable”. By June the new Trust bosses and NHS officials had come up with sweeping plans that would leave...

Against the backdrop of the new Health and Social Care Act, and deep cuts to NHS budgets, Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) held its AGM on Saturday 23 June. The meeting lasted just one hour but was followed by a public conference, “Reclaiming our NHS”, sponsored by a number of organisations including KONP, TUC, Unison, Unite, NHS Consultants Association, Socialist Health Association (SHA), Health Emergency and the NHS Support Federation (NSF). There were about 60 people at the KONP AGM and around 350 at the conference. Both events showed the need for more coordination of NHS campaigning efforts. The...

South London Healthcare NHS Trust includes Queen Mary Hospital in Sidcup, Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich and Princess Royal Hospital in Bromley. Its budget shortfall (£1 million a week) is the equivalent of employing 1,200 nurses or doing 200 hip operations a week. It is the first NHS organisation to go into the "unsustainable providers regime" — a system set up by New Labour but never used. Under that regime an administrator is brought in to run the Trust's board and to recommend measures directly to the Health Secretary about how to put the Trust on a more sustainable footing. The...

Jacky Davis is a member of the council of the British Medical Association (the doctors' trade union) and chair of campaigning organisation the NHS Consultants' Association. She spoke to Solidarity in a personal capacity. It's important to understand why we lost on the Health and Social Care Bill. Until we understand we won't be able to regain the upper hand. Partly it was the simple mathematics of the Coalition. The Lib Dems are so unpopular now they can't afford to leave the Coalition, no matter the political price. And they give the Tories a very solid majority. But we also have to look at...

According to Healthinvestor magazine, a trade journal for the parasitic profit makers in healthcare, private companies are complaining about how long it’s going to take for them to get their dirty hands on the profits from the great NHS giveaway. It is estimated that there is a £1.3 billion market in servicing Clinical Commissioning Groups. But it’s all taking too long to siphon off. There’s an air of nervousness amongst private sector. They fear they have been “cast as enemy number one” during the Health and Social Care Act “debacle”, says Healthinvestor. The new Health Alarm campaign has...

On Saturday 16 June about 60 people gathered for a "Resist NHS Privatisation and Cuts" meeting at South Bank University, London. John Lister of Health Emergency gave a detailed overview of privatisation and its consequences, emphasising that the Health and Social Care Act comes together with £20 billion of "efficiency savings" in the NHS. His main message was that we can't let this happen behind closed doors. We need to do all we can to pile on the pressure and make the implementation of the Bill as difficult as possible. The second speaker Frank Wood, Unite Exec member and hospital worker...

The NHS Liaison Network has published its first newsletter. Click here to download it as pdf .

The Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) that will control the NHS budget under the Tories’ new system have to serve just 75% of the population in their given geographical area. CCGs will attempt to use this flexibility to dump the most expensive, high risk patients. A recent investigation by a local Primary Care Trust found that a GP practice formerly run by Dr Charles Alessi, the new chair of the National Association of Primary Care (the pro-Health and Social Care Act lobby group), de-registered 48 elderly patients because “their demand for GP time and other resources was high”. The...

This year in Britain we’ve seen Christian fundamentalism asserting itself. In London, Brighton and Manchester we have seen pro-life pickets outside abortion clinics, where women are harassed and told lies about the effects of abortion. Fourtunately those pickets have not gone unchallenged by pro-choice campaigners. But increasingly, on our streets and university campuses, pro-life organisations hold stalls and workshops distributing anti-abortion propaganda. Now Catholic (“pro-life”) charity Care Confidential is seeking to bring all its affiliated centres up to “commissioning status” standard...