Unison Annual Health Care Conference Opens in Gateshead

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Unison Annual Health Care Conference Opens in Gateshead

The Fight to Safeguard the Future of the Health Service is More Vital than Ever

The Unison Annual health care Conference opens in Gateshead today, Monday April 24.  In its Executive report to be presented to conference by the Health Care Service Group points out that “over the past 12 months the NHS has seen unprecedented levels of attack from the private sector as the government steers it further towards a mixed economy”.

            As the Unison Conference takes place the crucial issue that is facing health workers today is that the government’s policy of wrecking the NHS under the guise of "combating overspending” and its reckless job cull cannot be accepted. Safeguarding the future of the NHS and defending their interests means demanding to take part in the budget setting process for the NHS, which must take as its starting point the country’s total social product and not just the revenue that the government has collected from taxes. Sufficient resources be made available to the NHS for it to respond to the health needs of everyone, and that all private profiteering from health care be outlawed, and an investigation under the control of people’s representatives be launched into this scandal with a view to reclaiming the vast sums channelled through the health service into private hands.

The Prime Minister is declaring that this is a crunch time for the NHS, while the Health Secretary is declaring that the NHS has just had its best year ever. What they are both speaking of is the unfolding in all its sordid implications of the programme of “investment with reform”.

            “Investment with reform” is the government’s code for paying the rich, the privatisation of social programmes, and the pushing through of the neo-liberal agenda whereby everything is done for the benefit of the finance capitalists, and this is presented in all its glory as progress. The absurdity is being pushed of a £700m “deficit” in the NHS, which demands that the Trusts become more “efficient” under the watchword of “payment by results”. This term seemed laughable when it was first introduced, but its serious and sinister intent is becoming evident.

            The government is demanding that the health service be run by the rules of “corporate governance”. The government has set a so-called statutory duty for the hospital trusts to “break even”. This equation is presented as though the health service were a producer of added value, manufacturing a commodity which is being sold on the market, a commodity which comes in a variety of flavours over which the health consumer can exercise “choice”. But it is the government which provides the trusts with their budget. For example, the Kensington and Chelsea Trust was set a budget of £270m to run its health services for the year ending March 2005. And it is the government which is now creating the hysteria that this is a crunch time for the NHS.

            So the issue is not “crisis or no crisis” in the NHS. It is the government which is demanding that patient services be cut and nurses and other staff lose their jobs. It is the government which is demanding that to ensure its reforms go through that hospitals are being merged (i.e. dozens of hospitals closed) and hospital wards must be shut down. Then it has the temerity to claim that the problem is the wages bill of health workers.

            Equally, the problem is not “mismanagement”, or that “costs” are hidden or not known, but it is the agenda of the government for the health service and other social programmes which is causing disaster.

            This is the meaning of Tony Blair’s declaration that this is the moment “to hold our nerve”. Whose nerve is he holding? It is just nonsense when he declares that the reforms of “investment with reform” expose the deficits but do not create them, that his reforms are closing the hiding places for “poor financial management”. Billions of pounds are being spent to enrich the pharmaceutical and other health monopolies, as well as to bolster the health service as a “corporate” entity with an internal and external market, swarms of accountancy firms, and the like. How dare he tell the hospitals and trusts to “live within their means”. On the contrary, he should end the scandal of handing over public funds to the monopolies, institute a moratorium on debt, and provide the health service with the means it requires to provide for the health care of the people.

            Tony Blair is also demanding that hospitals and trusts enter into competition with each other, and the greater the number of patients treated, the greater the funding, called “payment by results”. This is a formula for leaving the health care of the people out of account and ensuring that hospitals providing vital services are under-funded, as well as going against the requirement of society that preventive medicine be increased. Tony Blair has the effrontery to claim that this is placing “greater power in the hands of the patient”.

            It is evident that the fight to safeguard the future of the health service is more vital than ever. This is a watershed moment for the future of the NHS. Cuts under whatever name are still cuts, and are striking at heart of the conception of a system in which health care is a right. The ugly face of the neo-liberal agenda and paying the rich is being exposed. WDIE calls on the working class and people to join the growing struggle to safeguard the future of the health service and to provide the right to health care with a guarantee.