Correspondence:
People of Greenwich Continue Fight against Cuts in
Healthcare
On March 2, members of the Hands Off Greenwich NHS Campaign
recently had a meeting with two local Labour MPs, Nick Raynsford and John
Austin, in the House of Commons. They expressed the Campaign’s concern
about the deterioration of healthcare in the Greenwich and surrounding areas of
South East London.
The Campaign members showed a video made by Declan Gassney
of University College, London, which demonstrated that the overall effect of
the Government backed Private Finance Initiative (PFI) was to reduce,
not increase the net amount of money going to healthcare. The Campaign members
illustrated this with the concrete examples of the proposed closure of the
Greenwich District Hospital and the selling off of the Woodlands nurses home in
Vanbrugh Hill. They argued that the effect of PFI, in using private companies
as a method of funding, is to actually increase NHS Trust costs, as all
supposed savings on service costs are absorbed by the PFI capital costs as the
Trusts have to pay "availability and capital charges" to the private
companies. Thus a supposed "saving" of, for example, £8 million
operating costs has to be seen in the light of a PFI "availability
payment" of £11 million. Not only this, but after the leases expire,
typically after 20-30 years, the properties would go to the companies concerned
and would cease to be NHS property. The overall result of this, of course, is
that far less money goes to actual healthcare, and the only people who gain are
the private companies.
The two Labour MPs were not impressed by this argument. They
simply backed the Government's PFI line, one even cynically saying words to the
effect that "what does this all matter as long as new hospitals are
built", and cut short the discussion with the excuse that they "had
another meeting to attend".
A few days later at a public forum organised by Greenwich
Council to discuss local problems, an elderly member of the Greenwich Campaign
again raised the issue of cutbacks in healthcare in the area, highlighting in
particular those for the elderly. She very forthrightly criticised the adverse
effects of PFI including the selling off of the Woodlands student nurses
hostel. The young chairman of the meeting tried to cut short what she was
saying several times, in a very brusque and arrogant manner having no regard
for her age, nor for the very important and relevant things she had to say. He
finally said that the question of healthcare in the area was a
"political" matter for the government and that she should address her
remarks to her MP! Thus the policies of a Labour government are not relevant
topics for discussion at a Labour council meeting, even when these policies
have a direct effect on the local community! Similarly, at a meeting of the
Arsenal Patients' Forum in Woolwich on February 16, the issue of overall lack
of government funding for the NHS both nationally and locally raised by an
ordinary local resident was dismissed by the chair of the meeting as being
"a political issue" and not relevant to the meeting.
All this illustrates very clearly not only the Labour
government's wholesale backing of big business at the expense of the wellbeing
of the people, but also the extent to which it is determined that ordinary
people are not to have any say whatsoever in life and death issues affecting
their lives.
Reader from South East London
