Critical Time for Taking Forward the Struggle to Safeguard the Future of the Health Service

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Critical Time for Taking Forward the Struggle to Safeguard the Future of the Health Service

At the Unison Health Conference:
Brazen Remarks of Health Minister Get What They Deserve

The sentiment of health workers in health trusts up and down the country is that their hospital is their workplace, the hospital is their hospital and the health service is their NHS. With this spirit of the conscious and collective participation of the workforce, the fight to safeguard the future of the health service is being taken up in a new way.

Health Workers from England, Scotland and Wales at the Unison and TUC Rally Outside Conference

            At the Unison health conference in Gateshead yesterday, health secretary Patricia Hewitt meted out disinformation that the hospitals in “deficit” were not in the poorest areas of the country. Yet on Tyneside, even hospitals not subject to PFI have “shortfalls” of millions of pounds because of government reduction in funding due to so-called “efficiency” saving. It is absurd to speak of “efficiency” when nurses are struggling to cope because of low staffing levels.

            Instead of setting the aim of the health service to meet the claims of people on society for health care for all without discrimination at the highest level commensurate with the development of society, competition – as in all spheres of society – is being made a fetish by the government and the interests it represents. Hospitals are being defined in corporate terms and the health trusts are being urged to compete with each other to attract patients as consumers of health care. The implication and the outcome is that those “successful” in this competition of “payment by results” attract funding, while the “unsuccessful” go to the wall. What has this got to do with health care as a right?

            But the question may also be posed, where is the “investment” of the “investment with reform” really going? The answer is, for example:

• £12 billion in setting up the internal market;
• £10 billion will have gone to private finance to service the PFI by 2007-8 and then will be costing £2 billion a year;
• £10.3 billion to the drug monopolies each year.

            Viewed in this light, the figure given for the overall NHS deficit of £700 million is in any case not a determining factor. But the real question is: who decides the NHS budget? This issue of a “deficit” is a fraud. Any reasonable person would say sufficient resources must 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. The country’s total social product and not just the revenue that the government has collected from taxes is the resource. What is the economy for if it is not to provide for all who live and work in it and especially to meets the needs for health care?

            The starting point is that sufficient resources be made available to the NHS for it to respond to the health needs of everyone. It is the working people, the health workers and the health professionals who have the right to participate in the budget-setting process for the NHS, and the struggle must be waged to exercise this right.

            Let us take up  a campaign to safeguard the future of the NHS and involve everyone in this crucial fight   the movement to safeguard the future of the NHS!

Yesterday, a government minister was praised for “braving” a union conference and this was reported when Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Health spoke at Unison’s national health conference in Gateshead where it was said she was met with stony silence and heckles from delegates.    Actually, what happened was there was complete and utter disbelief on the faces of the delegates who were taken aback by the sheer suspension of reality in Patricia Hewitt’s brazen remarks.  This was like some bizarre parallel universe linking Patricia Hewitt in Gateshead and Tony Blair in Whitehall who also gave a press conference on the NHS making similar remarks.  

            This parallel universe is apparently one where slashing hospital services and staffing levels by forcing NHS Trusts to “balance their books” leads to a “better service”.   In fact it was so good that the NHS  “had seen its best year so far” according to her remarks. 

            According to Patricia Hewitt the government had “written a very big cheque” for the NHS, but then wanted to point out there were no “blank cheques”. That the government is really writing out “blank cheques” for the Independent Private Treatment Centres was pointed out to her later when she “answered questions”.

            According to the divide and rule logic in the parallel universe, it was only the hospitals in what she called “rich areas” that were overspent. The ones in poor areas were in surplus and subsidising the rich areas, so what was all the fuss about. When delegates referred to cuts taking place in poor areas of the country by “overspent” hospitals this simply drew a repeated assertion that “any action that the NHS takes to reduce deficits should not lower the quality of care provided to patients”. 

            If this wasn’t enough, what beggared belief in the eyes of the delegates was that she said that the NHS building programme based on the private finance initiative “was not privatisation”.    Conference could hardly be blamed for the derision that followed.   However, this was nothing to when a few minutes later she suggested that health care assistants were not skilled. This incensed the conference so much that she quickly apologised.

            Then the irony was not lost on the delegates when she stated that   by the end of 2008, the government will effectively have abolished… waiting lists – only to have someone interject the NHS instead of waiting lists.

            It is not courage to spread disinformation and defend the indefensible. It is cowardice not to look reality in the eye. Courage of their convictions is what the health workers are demonstrating in fighting for the right of all to health care. In provoking the forthright opposition from the Unison delegates representing the mass of the health workers, the Health Secretary’s remarks got what they deserved.