By Keep Our NHS Public

Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) campaigners plan to protest against increasing health service privatisation at an upcoming event attended by Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care is due to discuss Labour’s plans to tackle England’s health and social care crisis with Guardian politics editor Pippa Crerar in London on Tuesday, 25th March.

KONP are inviting supporters to join them outside the venue – the Conway Hall – at 6.30pm, just before the event starts, to ensure the Health Secretary hears their concerns about his plans.

A KONP spokesperson said: “The public doesn’t want more privatisation in the NHS. However, Streeting doesn’t listen to NHS campaigners, workers or patients.

“The NHS is in crisis, and the government’s priorities are elsewhere. Streeting is centralising power to his department, and is axing thousands of jobs at NHS England and threatens £7 billion of NHS cuts. The plans for more cuts to disability benefits attacks disabled people and will put even more strain on our health service.

“Private providers doing NHS work undermines the health service by taking much needed funding and staff.  Streeting must listen to the demands of NHS campaigners, patients, and workers, commit to ending the private involvement that ultimately weakens our NHS and invest urgently to rebuild the NHS.

“Please join us outside Conway Hall on Tuesday, 25th March from 6:30pm 8:30 to let Wes Streeting know the NHS is here to stay, privatisation no way!”

Time: Meet at 6:30pm.

Location: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion St, London, WC1R 4RL

The abolition of NHS England in its entirety has been justified by the government on the spurious grounds of a ‘cut to bureaucracy’ and bringing management of the health service ‘back into democratic control’.But while campaigners have often fought for more democracy in NHS decision-making, Starmer and Streeting, the architects of this latest spate of cuts, are enthusiastically in favour of expanding the involvement of the private sector in our NHS.

Starmer used abolition of NHSE as the main example of how he will remedy the ‘overstretched’ and ‘unfocused’ state. This comes amid major cuts to disability benefits and job cuts to the civil service. 

The parallels with events unfolding in the US are chilling. Some Labour aides have taken to referring to the agenda as “project chainsaw”, a reference to the dramatic and legally questionable cuts to the US executive branch currently being overseen by Elon Musk. 

The central question remains – how is Labour going to fix the NHS as it promised and as the electorate demands? 

Clearly appropriate concern over not meeting targets for NHS performance has fuelled the desire for more centralised control while overemphasising modest gains. In March, we saw that the 2 million more appointments in the first seven months of office were trumpeted as Labour delivering on its manifesto promises. This will have made but a small dent in the waiting list of 6.25 million people waiting for 7.43 million treatments and a  lot more will have to be done to shift the dial. Meanwhile, other manifesto commitments including building new hospitals and rolling back outsourcing have simply been abandoned.

Those now taking charge in the DHSC include Alan Milburn, Paul Corrigan and others from the Blair-Brown years. They are strongly associated with the policies of privatisation and marketisation of health care which substantially failed in the 2000s. Then, it was the serious investment in the NHS itself that ended long waiting lists and restored public satisfaction. Instead of learning from Labour’s past experience in office, we are seeing an emphasis on a return of private investment to solve lack of capital funding and billions invested to expand the private sector with incentives for providers.

It is difficult at present to see the abolition of NHSE and thousands of redundancies as anything other than a move to facilitate Labour plans for ’reform’. The bad news is that ‘reform’ looks like another reorganisation where the beneficiaries will be private companies as an increasingly fragmented NHS is opened up to commercial interests. It’s no surprise that NHSE staff are ‘in shock and awe’ at the scale of the job cuts, which have spiralled from 2,000 just weeks earlier to 6,500 last week to now, with 10,000 job losses said to make £500 million savings. 

More information at:  http://www.keepournhspublic.com

Image: KONP protest at Westminster earlier this month, c/o Labour Hub.