NHS and health

Organise to recue the NHS!

At the start of October, on the initiative of the NHS Liaison Network, Labour Party conference voted to prioritise the NHS for debate and then passed a resolution calling for the repeal of the Health and Social Care Act, opposing the cuts, and demanding the rebuilding of the NHS, paid for by taxing the rich. Within hours of conference passing the resolution, Labour leader Ed Miliband told Channel 4 news he could not promise not make cuts in the NHS. Few believe we can rely on the Labour leaders to save the NHS. It was the last Labour government that promoted the Private Finance Initiative (PFI...

Make Labour act on its NHS policy

Pat Smith, the Hull North Constituency Labour Party delegate who moved the NHS motion at Labour Party conference, spoke to Solidarity. What’s your assessment of the debate on the NHS? The presence of protesters on the NHS Liaison Committee lobby was very effective, and must have been a factor in a majority of delegates prioritising the NHS for discussion. It also put pressure on the party officials and right-wingers who tried to water down the motion in compositing. We got everything we wanted apart from text against the internal market. I think the leadership realised they couldn’t bully or...

Lobby challenges Labour leaders on NHS

Over a hundred and fifty activists lobbied the Labour Party conference on Sunday 30 September, under the banner of the NHS Liaison Network. As delegates went in, they heard vigorous chants: "Seize the banks/ Reclaim our wealth/ Spend it on/ The National Health". Inside the conference, constituency Labour Party delegates voted to put the NHS top of the four issues they can get onto the agenda. After the conference session, the compositing session for NHS motions - with fifteen motions roughly on the lines of the motion supported by the NHS Liaison Network, and one "spoiler" - took two and a...

Labour: reverse NHS cuts!

According to the Royal College of Physicians, acute hospitals are on the point of collapse. Emergency admissions have increased 37% in the last decade, but hospitals have a third fewer beds than 25 years ago. For a while the decrease in beds was matched by a shortening of patients’ stays in hospital, but that trend is now in reverse. Older patients are coming into hospital with more complex conditions and are staying longer. Meanwhile the Tories plan £20 billion cuts by 2014-5, and £50 billion by 2019-20. The Tories’ Health and Social Care Act, passed despite wide protest in March, will make...

Rescue the NHS from demolition

The size and scale of the NHS demolition project is slowly coming into view. Every Primary Care Trust is now putting three services out to tender. In April 2013, the National Commissioning Board will sell off 912 specialist services (or “products” as they are referred to in government reports). By October 2013 a further three chunks of the NHS will go to the private sector. In total the Financial Times estimates contracts worth a staggering £20 billion (or 20% of the NHS) will be in the hands of private contractors in the next few years. The Tories have decreed that PCTs must have completed...

Save Central Middlesex A&E!

On Saturday 15 September more than 100 people joined a march against NHS cuts through Harlesden to the Central Middlesex Hospital (aka Park Royal Hospital). Along with Ealing and Hammersmith Hospitals, Central Middlesex is set to lose its A&E department under proposals put forward by NHS North West London (NHSNWL). The deadline of the NHSNWL consultation “Shaping a Healthier Future” is 8 October. Central Middlesex is a busy hospital, in an area with significant industry, close to Wembley Stadium, but already the A&E is closed at night. If the A&E closed permanently, patients from this area of...

Hunt carries a health warning

The promotion of Jeremy Hunt to the position of Health Secretary is a sign of the supreme confidence of David Cameron’s adminstration and the contempt in which they hold the electorate. Jeremy Hunt is the personification of the glutton and venality of the capitalist class at this time of austerity. Like the Health and Social Care Act itself, his appointment as Health Secretary only makes sense from the point of view of powerful corporate interests. Educated in Charterhouse and Oxford University, he is one of the growing number of white, public school boys in the Cabinet. Throughout his career...

Andy Burnham = Lansley-lite?

Labour’s front-bench health spokesperson, Andy Burnham made a pledge at the TUC rally in March this year that if he is health secretary when Labour are next in power he will repeal the Tories’ Health and Social Care Act, which became law in March 2012 and vastly increases privatisation and marketisation of the Health Service. But the pledge is full of loopholes. Most of the current cuts in the NHS were planned by Andy Burnham while he was Health Secretary. Burnham started off as Shadow Health Secretary by criticising Tory health minister Andrew Lansley for planning to increase health spending...

Labour: restore the NHS!

The NHS Liaison Network, which advocates for and seeks to organise coordination between all pro-NHS campaigns, has organised a lobby of the Labour Party conference on Sunday 30 September — from 2.30pm at Peter Street, Manchester. The protest is supported by, among others, Unite Northwest Region, Keep Our NHS Public London and the Labour Representation Committee. It will demand that Labour commit to restoring the Health Service as a public service. It is necessary because all we have from the Labour leaders at present is a promise to repeal the Health and Social Care Act (accompanied by...

Stop these parasites!

News of potential job losses at Circle-run Hinchingbrooke Hospital has come as no surprise to campaigners who opposed a controversial franchise deal. Six months into the deal, which was seen by many as a testing ground for the future of the NHS, it is rumoured that 50 nursing and nursing assistant posts could go as part of efficiency savings. It is also believed that £500,000 has been cut from the cleaning budget with staff facing cuts and redundancies. When the management of Hinchingbrooke Healthcare Trust was taken over by Circle in February ministers declared it was a 'financial and...

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