Letters

Letter from Steve McKenzie, Unite Community member

Health service campaigners in the Erith and Thamesmead constituency, on the outer edge of South East London, wrote to their Labour MP, Abena Appong Asare, raising concerns about privatisation and the state of the NHS. They were all suprised to receive standard replies that were identical, word for word.  

The reply included the following: “Thank you for contacting me to raise concerns about NHS privatisation and the state of the NHS.

“The NHS is our greatest institution, established 75 years ago to provide universal healthcare free at the point of use. I am committed to upholding its founding principles as a comprehensive, integrated, and public NHS: a right afforded to everyone regardless of ability to pay.

“Both the Leader of the Opposition and the Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary have pledged to safeguard our NHS as a publicly funded service, free at the point of use. It is not, and never will be, for sale. They will empower commissioners, alongside NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care, to act as a bulwark against privatisation. The NHS will be the preferred provider of services, and there will be an end to the reliance on outsourcing.

“Right now, one of the major challenges in the health system is that people cannot access healthcare quickly enough. Despite the heroic efforts of staff, waiting lists have risen to record levels – 7.8 million.

“I am committed to getting the NHS back on its feet. This is one of the Opposition’s five missions to build a better Britain: building capacity in the NHS – providing it with the staff and resources it needs – so that all patients are treated on time again.

“To address the immediate crisis, I support a fully-funded plan to tackle waiting lists – an additional £1.1 billion to pay staff extra to deliver two million more operations, scans and appointments every year, and a £171 million a year investment in state-of-the-art equipment and technology, doubling the number of CT and MRI scanners.

“These plans will be paid for with the money raised by scrapping the non-domiciled tax status, so that people who make their lives here pay their taxes here.

“In the short term, I believe we have a responsibility to utilise spare capacity in the independent sector too, to get through the current crisis and cut NHS waiting lists. Nobody should be left languishing in serious pain, while those who can afford to, pay to go private. That is the two-tier healthcare system that I and my colleagues want to end… [Emphasis added here]

“…Nye Bevan – who spearheaded the creation of the NHS – said in 1948 that “this service must always be changing, growing and improving”. I support a 10-year plan of investment and reform that seeks to do just that: dealing with the root causes and immediate challenges while building an NHS that is fit for the future”

The official line of the Labour Party, therefore, is to use “spare capacity” in the private sector, even though many of the doctors providing the operations and procedures are moonlighting from their jobs in the NHS, which trained them in the first place. Labour should be taking the private sector into the NHS – as was done in 1948 by Bevan – to take up the “spare capacity”.

Bevan would have objected strongly to the private sector fleecing the NHS like this – this is definitely not what he meant by the NHS “changing, growing and improving”. He would have been appalled at the idea of sickness being the source of some big company’s profits.

[Picture: part of Labour’s front bench from BBC HoC newsfeed]