If the NHS continues down the road of privatisation, it will cease to exist as we know it.
If the NHS continues down the road of privatisation, it will cease to exist as we know it
Today is an opportunity for all of us to fight for one of Britain’s greatest achievements – our National Health Service.
Loved by most and used by the overwhelming majority of the public, our NHS is now under threat and we must fight to protect it.
When the Health and Social Care Act 2012 was passed, our NHS was put up for sale and has been subjected to creeping privatisation ever since.
Labour MP Clive Efford has put forward a Private Members Bill to Parliament which aims to reduce procurement and tendering procedures that provide a gateway to the private corporations to buy into our NHS and also sees millions of pounds wasted on competition lawyers.
Receiving its second reading in Parliament next week on 21 November, the #BackTheBill campaign will take its message to the streets today.
Backed by the TUC and several affiliated trade unions, campaigners will be telling the public tomorrow to put pressure on their MPs to vote for the bill.
Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) members believe that although the Efford Bill is not completely satisfactory in its present form in meeting all of KONP’s demands for the NHS, it is worth campaigning for because it raises the public’s awareness of NHS privatisation.
One of KONP’s founders, Professor Allyson Pollock, and colleagues Peter Roderick and David Price have produced a ‘NHS Reinstatement Bill’ which details the legal steps required to fully restore the NHS in England and reverse the failings of the H&SC Act.
KONP along with other NHS campaigning groups fully support Professor Pollock’s Bill.
Professor Pollock has voiced concerns that Efford’s Bill needs to go further and still requires some clarification in parts.
However, crucially she states the Efford Bill is a ‘step in the right direction’.
This bill is keeping the NHS at the top of the political agenda and the vote next Friday will force MPs from all parties to acknowledge that the people demand an end to any privatisation of our NHS and that we want it fully restored to public ownership.
KONP have been working hard since its founding in 2005 to protect the NHS from privatisation, but the next six months run up to the general election will be a crucial time.
We must utilise all campaigning opportunities to inform people about the very real threat our NHS is under, but above all we must be united in our common cause. Next Thursday there will be an all night vigil on Parliament Square in support of the Bill, and activities on the Friday whilst the Bill is being debated in Parliament.
Aneurin Bevan, minister for health when the NHS was founded in 1945, once said the NHS ‘will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it’.
If the NHS continues down the road of privatisation, it will cease to exist as we know it.
Putting profit before people compromises the quality of our health care and is the wrong ethos to have at the heart of our nation’s health system. The people demand a publicly funded, publicly provided, publicly accountable and comprehensive NHS.
Sakina Sheikh is an administrative and fundraising assistant at KONP. She writes in a personal capacity
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23 Responses to “No time to waste – six months to save our NHS”
treborc1
Yes it has it was falling to pieces under Thatcher for god sake the NHS is nowhere near that state now, not even in Wales, sadly labour saved our NHS with a view to flogging it off to the yanks, so no change then. I do think the public are sick of it but of course they maybe sick as hell of the political games of all parties , but the fact is once it’s gone it’s gone for ever
Cole
Actually, it’s the Tories who are selling it off, to the delight of their donors.. Yes, Labour foolishly did a bit of it, but it has been massively speeded up by the Tory Health and Social Care Bill. And of course Ukip want to get rid of it altogether and introduce an insurance system, (though they’re now denying it having realised it’s massively unpopular).
Cole
Labour’s record is far from perfect, but they’d definitely protect the NHS better than the Tory, LibDem or Ukip alternatives. Without a shred of doubt.
AlanGiles
The problem is, just like when Hain closed the first tranche of Remploy factories and Purnell implemented Freud in full, Labour set a precedent. Once you start a process it is easier for somebody else to come along and continue it, as we saw with Duncan-Smith and Lansley and Hunt.
Labour cannot pretend it wasn’t complicit, and that it is highly unlikely they would reverse the bad decisions Blair/Brown Labour and the Coalition have made. The current Labour front bench are so spineless I have no confidence in them.
Ian Brannan
This cannot possibly be true the Unionist parties Labour/Liberals/Tories have spent the last 3 years tellings Scots that there was unequivocally NO threat to the NHS in Scotland or the wider UK. Indeed here is Labour MSP Neil Findlay stating that the idea the Tories are a threat to the NHS is a “scandalous deceit”. – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL3Ffx6_A8Y
Here is the same Labour MSP stating that the Tories are NOT cutting the NHS funding in England – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGPCGPhZ_OI&list=UUEUFAj67rdiYOoAMtwX8yRg
Here is another Labour MSP Malcolm Chisolm claiming that the idea that the Tories pose a threat to the NHS is the “biggest lie” of the referendum campaign – http://www.scotsman.com/news/malcolm-chisholm-yes-camp-scaremongering-on-nhs-1-3511151
You would be fools to believe a word that Labour say on the NHS, they blatantly lied to the Scottish electorate to get them to vote no.