What next for the NHS?

So you may have noticed that the Health and Social Care is now an Act. Despite widespread and deep-felt opposition from professionals, the public and many politicians it has passed into law.

However, this does not mean the end of ‘Defend our NHS’. Infact we have renewed strength to continue fighting for a good quality National Health Service that is free at the point of use for all. We want this Bill reversed (as promised by Andy Burnham, Labour Shadow Health Secretary) and there is plenty we can do in the meantime, infact it is crucial that we continue as a group and as part of a wider movement. We need to:

1) Find out what the Act will mean in practice, what the structure will look like, who will be accountable and how this will work, especially important because of the shift towards local government.

2) Raise awareness of how things have changed.

3) Monitor things locally to ensure that the Act will not result in backdoor privatisation, lower quality service and increased health inequalities.

4) Fight on a case by case basis where necessary, using the NHS structure, political processes and other campaigning means at our disposal.

We are in this for the long haul.

Because this is a great period of change for all of us, the public meeting on Monday 21 May comes at a vital time. In partnership with York Social Ideas, a panel of experts will explore what the Health and Social Care Act will mean in practice. Come and listen, ask questions and be part of the discussion. Speakers include:

• Prof David Hunter, Professor of Health Policy Durham University
• Kevin McAleese CBE, Chair, York & NY PCT
• Dr David Geddes, Medical Director and Director Primary Care, York and NY PCT
• Dr John Puntis, Consultant,  Leeds Teaching Hospital.

7.30 Friargate Friends Meeting House. All welcome! Click here to reserve your place.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Lobby a Lord!

This weekend, I am asking if you could spend a couple of minutes, to email a Lib Dem Peer and ask them to support Lord Owen’s motion (using this really quick link here.) Peers are not used to lots of emails/letters in the same way as MPs so it should have more impact! 

We have a day and a half to try and persuade Peers to support Lord Owen’s motion. The motion would delay voting on the Health and Social Care Bill until the Risk Register has been published. How can the Bill be passed when we don’t know scale or nature of the huge risks that will be taken?? There is a legal requirement for the government to publish the Risk Register. They still have not done so. 

If you need reminding of why the NHS needs our help here is a quick reminder of what the changes will do – the Bill will give more power to GPs to commission health care with a massive increase in the use of profit-driven companies and with a huge reduction (if any) accountability to government.

In effect, in the most straightforward terms, this will:

Reduce the amount of time GPs will spend on their actual jobs – 2/3rds of doctors think this Bill will make the NHS worse.

Create more bureaucracy in the NHS

Create a huge financial burden on tax payers at a time when the country faces an austerity crisis

Create a ‘post-code lottery’. There will be a huge increase in the differences between regions as to what you are able to get free at the point of use and what you have to pay for. The government will not be our accountable body for us to challenge the inconsistencies.

It could result in private patients jumping the queue to get treatment.

It will lead to profit being central to our health care, not the patient. It will not improve the quality of care.

This is the wrong Bill, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.

It is based on a lack of information and misinformation.

Please email a Peer, express your concerns and ask them to vote for Lord Owen’s motion.

Please also sign your name in this petition asking for a referendum on the NHS. No-one voted for this. It was not in any manifestos, in fact the very opposite, protection of the NHS was promised by this government. There is no mandate for this destructive and dangerous Bill that will dismantle our NHS.

Please email a Peer this weekend!

The NHS will come to stand for Not Here Soon – we have eight days to save our NHS.

The last week has seen a huge amount of activity around the Health and Social Care Bill. First let’s start with some positives; such as the TUC rally to Save Our NHS in London. See Youtube for speeches, in particular, this powerful one from David Owen.

An amazing 20,000 of us chipped in to the 38 degrees campaign to put up huge billboards across London. These feature health practitioners warning the public about the dangerous consequences for the NHS if the Bill is passed.

There has been a lot of media attention as the NHS featured heavily in this weekend’s Liberal Democrat conference. The Lib Dems voted against the motion for Lib Dem peers to support the third reading of the Bill when it reaches the Lords next week. So this is good – the majority of Lib Dems felt that the Bill had not been changed significantly enough for them to advocate supporting it.

However, they also voted against the motion to drop the Bill completely. They are stuck in the middle, sitting on the fence. It is a mixture of confusion and cowardice. (See this Guardian article for further explanation.)

Another avenue which is being pursued rigorously is a debate in the Commons. Dr Kailash Chand’s (OBE) ‘Drop the Bill’ e-petition has received over 170,000 signatures. The MPs on the Backbench Business Committee refused to allow time for the Bill to be debated. However, Andy Burnham, shadow Health Secretary, has secured a slot for the debate and vote on Tuesday (13^th March). The outcome of this debate will be interesting but I am not convinced it will be radical.

The Bill will reach the Lords for its third reading and final vote on 19 March.

There are a few things we can do:

1. Continue to raise awareness. You can order free leaflets and posters from the 38 degrees website. Tweet/blog/talk to people voicing your concerns about the Bill and about the urgency of it. If the recent Kony 2012 video (with all its problems) has demonstrated anything it is the power of how fast things can spread, through the power of social media, of promoting messages by putting up posters and talking to people. The issues have inspired debate, criticism and passion and it has been hard to ignore. But raising public awareness does not on its own lead to change.

2. Lobby our MPs – be passionate. They represent us. Urge them to vote against the Bill.

3. Lobby a Lord. All the major amendments that would significantly help control the damage done by the Bill have been defeated but the margins have fallen over time. For example the latest amendment on the Private Patient Income Cap was defeated by a government majority of 58. This means that if 30 crossbench and Liberal Peers switched votes, the amendment would have passed.

This is a chance to help limit the disastrous consequences of the Bill. We can make it hard for the government to accept the Bill as a whole through changing the opinions and the votes of the Lords. The list of peers to lobby is here: under non-contents. Their contact details can be found here. Alternatively click on the TUC’s link to be assigned one at random.

There are two important dates to focus our attention on:

Tuesday 13 March – debate in the Commons.

Monday 19 March – Lords third reading and vote.

Let’s do as much as we can in the next 8 days to persuade our MPs and Peers that this Health and Social Care Bill is the wrong Bill at the wrong time. If we want to keep our Health Service National, Not for Profit but for the Patient, they need to vote against the Bill.

Politicians are finally waking up…

The Health and Social Care Bill is back in the news and back in public debate.

This week’s newsnight raised some interesting issues that have been circulating in the debate this week, not least, questions over the identity of the 3 Cabinet members who raised strong criticism of the bill. (See Conservative Home website.) The issue is becoming political: Will Lansley go? Who would take over? Will this explode the chances of the Conservatives in the next election? Pictures such as this (from the Conservatives) which show Cameron sitting on a stick on dynamite, labelled ‘NHS’ are sending out a clear message.

Better late than never, Ed Miliband earlier this week called for a cross-party campaign backed by professionals and the public saying that we have 3 months to save the NHS. For this to be truly effective Labour need to put forward some solid positive alternatives of how they would make savings in the NHS and how they would improve it. We do need reform but in a meaningful way and not a ‘reform’ put forward that is riddled with problems and is receiving increasing criticism from all sides. Reform should be focused on ideas from health professionals and people within the NHS, supported by the public.

This week a YouGov poll shows only 18% of the public support the Bill. and 49% think that increasing competition will not improve outcomes for the NHS.

As such, by asserting that the Bill had huge support from all sides, Health Minister, Simon Burns, needed no help in undermining his arguments and sounding ridiculous. It is clear this Bill is not the right one. The public, professionals and Cabinet members know that the Bill is riddled with huge problems and will have disasterous outcomes.

One of the arguments pro-Bill is that ‘it would be too late to turn back now as it would do more damage.’ There are two questions that come to mind here:

Firstly why has it started already? We should not have gone down any route to turn back from until the Bill has been passed into law. We are currently writing letters to John Bercow raising this very point. Practical changes to the NHS are being made without the legal backing.

Secondly, it is most certainly not too late to change the course of action as the consequences of going through with the Bill will be much much worse than turning back. This argument, of ‘saving face’ does not justify going ahead with the Bill.

New Year’s resolution #1: Keep up the pressure – Defend our NHS!

We rounded off 2011 with a really interesting and useful meeting with the York MP, Hugh Bayley, local councillors and practitioners (see last post). For 2012 the Defend Our NHS group has carried on much where it left off.  We have been busy sending letters to Ed Miliband, York MPs: Hugh Bayley and Julian Sturdy and the York press. These have covered a range of things including an article in the Press ‘Implants illustrate private health risk’ and criticism of Hugh Bayley’s Private Members’ Bill and Labour’s position in general on the NHS. We urge Labour to take a more aggressive policy on the NHS.

We are currently writing letters to John Bercow, the Speaker, to raise and challenge the issue of legality around the changes in the NHS. No law has been passed. The Health and Social Care Bill is still in the Lords, at the Select Committee stage, yet the NHS is currently (and has been for months) being dismantled. This shows a complete disregard for our parliamentary systems and that of democracy.

For the Select Committee’s report see  here and for the British Medical Association’s repose see  here. It will reach Report Stage on 8 Feb 2012.

The York Defend Our NHS group is developing regional links hoping to strengthen the opposition to the NHS.

There is a public meeting in Leeds Wed 15 Feb at 7pm at the Rosebowl which is part of Leeds Met University adjacent to Leeds Civic Hall close to Leeds General Infirmary. All welcome!

25 Feb – Leeds Against the Cuts/Leeds TUC – regional demo when the Tory Local Govt Conference comes to Leeds. Gather from 10.30am at Woodhouse Moor and march to City Square close to the Queen’s Hotel meeting for a short rally.

Defend Our NHS York’s next meeting – Wed 8 Feb (6.30 in the Snug in the Lamb and Lion) Hope to see you there!

Public Meeting

There was a well attended public meeting in St Clements Hall on a wet Friday evening in November at which over 50 local people took the trouble to turn to listen to a panel of speakers express their concerns about the Coalition Government’s Health and Social Care Bill, which has just received its 4th debate in the House of Lords.

The meeting was chaired by Dr. James Chan, a founder member of Defend Our NHS York, who now works for the health service in Hull. The four speakers were Dr. Simon Smale, a Consultant at York Hospital, Tina Funnell, Labour councillor and chair of the York Health Scrutiny Group, Hugh Bayley, MP for York Central, and Dave Taylor, Green Party councillor for Fishergate.

The Government first introduced the Bill into the House of Commons on the 19th January this year, taking everyone by surprise as there had been no hint of it in either party’s manifesto or the coalition agreement. And this after David Cameron’s pre-election promise that the NHS would be “safe with the Conservatives”. It clearly isn’t.

Although Liberal Democrat peers and others have proposed a range of possible amendments, the Bill’s intention is to encourage progressive privatization of the National Health Service. It will result in the most fundamental changes to everyone’s access to health care since the formation of the NHS in 1948. If the Conservative led coalition get their way all of us will soon be having to pay for an increasing number of treatments, many of which will be provided by companies whose first priority will be to ensure a profitable dividend for their share holders.

Many of the people who attended Friday evening’s meeting were clearly well informed, while others were there to find out what it was all about. If you want to know more, or you want to exercise your democratic right to lobby peers and MPs, here are some suggestions:

38 Degrees is a UK based, non-profit, organisation that campaigns on a range of issues. They had a major role in stopping the Government’s plans to sell off the Forestry Commission earlier this year. If you haven’t all ready signed up to their campaign to stop the Health and Social Care Bill, please do so now and encourage at least one other person to do the same.

Write to any, or all, the Yorkshire based members of the House of Lords. Alternatively the health service union Unison or 38 Degrees will identify a Lord for you to write to. The Lords are not accustomed to being lobbied by the public and if there is enough expression of concern this should encourage them to think again or at least give more attention to the detail than they otherwise might.

The Labour Party shadow health spokesman Andy Burnham has recently launched his own “Stop the Bill” campaign. The Green Party leader Caroline Lucas also expressed her opposition to the Bill. We need to keep up the momentum and that depends on ordinary members of the public making their voices heard.

Thank you to everyone who turned up that night.

The shape of things to come…

From yesterday’s local and national news emerged the shocking story that the Haxby and Wiggington practice in York had written to its patients claiming that a range of minor treatments were no longer funded by the NHS and instead were being offered for a fee. The private options they offered included HBG Ltd., a company that is wholly owned by the practice.

This is indicative of what is to come from the Health and Social Care Bill, with GPs potentially making profit from some services, services being lost to private companies due to the cutbacks in the National Health Service, and an increasingly blurry line between private and public health care.

John Appleby, chief economist of the King’s Fund says ‘there is is a massive conflict of interest here. The GP is earning money potentially from referring the NHS patient to his own private practice.” This is exactly what the consequences of the Health and Social Care Bill will be.

Hopefully this news, as much as it shows how bad things have really got, has done all those who love and want to maintain a national health service free for all at point of use, a great favour. By bringing the issues and problems association with the Bill into the public domain. For debate, discussion and dispute from the public, professionals and politicians. 

On the evening of Friday 11th November there will be a public meeting in York for discussion and debate about the changes to the NHS, what this could mean for York and how we can stop the Health and Social Care Bill. Where better to engage with people about the issues and the actions we can take than York? The place that has caught media attention in an unprecedented move towards the privatisation of our health service.

Watch this space…

The Health and Social Care Bill has just started to emerge in the media again after what seems like a long few months of silence from politicians and the media. However, other important issues, like pensions, threaten to divert our attention from the proposed destruction of our NHS. The Bill has already progressed with startling speed through the Commons and will reach the Lords for its second reading on 11^th October.

There has been relatively little public outrage, considering the devastating consequences that the Bill will have. We really need to be awakened to what stage the Bill is at, the very real dangers of what the Bill will actually mean, and to really step up our actions – locally and nationally – to stop it.

The Health and Social Care Bill threatens fragmentation and privatisation of the NHS through the abolition of PCT’s, the introduction of Commissioning Groups and through the introduction of a body called Monitor to oversee aspects of access and competition in the NHS. The Secretary of State is also trying to get rid of his responsibility to provide a National Health Service which will remove accountability at Government level.

The recent Panorama from Gerry Robinson really highlights the dangers of the Bill:

Who’s going to be managing that big picture? For me that’s the question that remains and unless somebody really does grab this thing in the centre and actually have the courage to make the decisions that are right but unpopular, I think it could be the end of the NHS.

Actions:

The Bill is going through the House of Lords so we really need to make an impact here and get our concerns across.

TUC Adopt a Peer. This will assign you to a Lord so you can write to them and express your concerns. As Peers are less used to receiving post compared to MPs, this could make a real difference.

The more public awareness we raise and the more people we can get on board with this campaign, locally and nationally, and the more chance of success we will have.

We are currently in the process of planning a public meeting in York to discuss the issues around the Bill and come up with ways to challenge it.

Visit 38 Degrees website to help get involved with the national campaign.

The Defend Our NHS group will meet next Thursday (22^nd) 6.30 in the Lamb and Lion (in the Snug) please do come along and help us come up with ways to organise, stop the Bill and save our NHS.

If you would like to be added to our mailing list please send an email to defendournhsyork@googlegroups.com and do feel free to comment on this blog!

We need to Act Now.

Once it’s gone, we won’t get it back.

A successful march in York!

Bystanders in the city centre cheered us on as 200 York residents marched through the city to a rally on Parliament Street on Saturday 21st May. The Defend our NHS York banner led the way, followed by hundreds chanting ‘Public health not private wealth!’.

It wasn’t just your usual suspects either. Families turned out and I spotted a few pushchairs in the human traffic jam. I didn’t hear any honking of horns so perhaps those inconvenienced drivers were supportive of our message.

The march arrived at Parliament Street where our booked out space at the fountains were occupied by a band (who were very good but didn’t have permission to be there!) so our rally was slightly thrown off, but the quality of speakers more than made up for that minor point. Baroness Afshar (Crossbench peer at the House of Lords) spoke first, followed by Gwen Vardigan from the Royal College of Nursing, Dr Smale, consultant gastroenterologist in York, Jen Clayton who made a fantastic speech about the slippery slope that we’re now on and drawing parallels to the tuition fees shame, and Tina Funnell as a long-time worker within the health sector.

So to those who missed the march and rally, here’s our message to the politicians who think they know best: Stop the Bill! The people don’t like it! It will lead to the destruction of the NHS and we’re just not going to stand for it!

And it looks like our efforts, along with many other marches and meetings and protests across the country, reported in local press, are being heard. In a speech by Nick Clegg today, he announced more watering down of Lansley’s original proposals and that the Bill may be forced back into the Commons for a rethink. Yet more signs that the Government are floundering. Water down a bad idea enough and you will only make it barely palatable and ‘barely palatable’ just isn’t good enough for the NHS.

Piling on the pressure

Let’s pile on the pressure!

Flyers are being sent around all over York and are popping up on the wards in the hospital. The Facebook event is filling up, and the local press (BBC Radio York, The Press) are picking up on it.

This video shows how it’s so important to keep up the pressure on the politicians, to help them to dissent and kick up a fuss in Parliament. Let’s face it, they’ll only kick up a stink if we kick up a stink. 38 Degrees has been very good at mobilising people around the country – let’s hope they can help spread the word about our local events too!