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A leaked White Paper, NHS Reforms, Matt Hancock taking control of the NHS and his new NHS plan, an ‘end to privatisation’ in the NHS, new White Paper. What’s going on?
The last week has seen several announcements, ‘leaked’ and actual, about the future of the NHS. Most commentators, if not all, are calling the proposals ‘new’ – as if Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock have seen the light, learned lessons from the pandemic and come up with a plan. Privatisation in the NHS will reduce, and there will be integration instead of competition, and everything will be lovely. This, as with many things this Government announces, is really the opposite of what the NHS White Paper means. New? There is not much actually new in these proposals and they are not a great undoing of the 2012 Health & Social care Act to make the NHS better– they are a logical extension of that Act and the NHS Long Term Plan (2019). This NHS White Paper wants to put into law an alternative structure to the NHS, the basis of which has already been rolled out across England at huge expense, without a democratic decision to do so. Integration? Integration of health and social care sounds good. In fact, we have supported the NHS Bill, calling for the reinstatement of the NHS, which advocates a truly integrated approach. But that would require more involvement and funding for local councils, not less. The Government’s Integrated Care Systems are wrongly named. They were proposed as a vehicle for ‘managing health and social care’ in the Long Term Plan but they are the continuation of the ideological path the Conservatives have been on for some time. ICSs won’t provide care according to people’s needs, which is the true responsibility of the NHS. Instead, they will have fixed budgets for an area and will ‘package’ their services to fit the budget – it’s a true Americanisation of the NHS. Less Privatisation? Matt Hancock’s new plans would mean more American-style privatisation, not less. It’s the United Health version of health care. Already 83 corporations and businesses, including 22 from the US, are heavily involved in developing ICSs and some even sit on their boards, putting them in a prime position to steer decisions towards making more profits. This is why Sussex Defend the NHS, and many other NHS campaigners, have been actively opposing these reforms - and their previous iterations such as STP’s (Sustainability and Transformation Plans) for some time. Find out more and join Sussex Defend the NHS in opposing this White paper. Find out more, especially about ICS, from Keep Our NHS Public Keep Our NHS Public (KONP). If you’re on social media then follow us: https://twitter.com/SussexDefendNHS https://www.facebook.com/SussexDefendTheNHS Please sign and share the petition from We Own It. https://weownit.org.uk/act-now/stop-matt-hancocks-private-takeover-nhs
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We welcome the launch of the Vaccines for All campaign website: www.vaccineforall.co.uk and the news that over 230 organisa tions have signed up to the call on the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that EVERYONE can access the coronavirus vaccine, regardless of immigration status, ID or proof of address.
Here is the link to the recent Treason Show dedicated to NHS workers Read the full text of our letter published in The Argus on 16th January 2021
Today’s Argus headlines make shocking reading, but it can’t be said that no one had seen it coming. For months over the summer, from the epidemiologists and other specialists to those working on the front line, the warnings about the need to prepare for the second wave, that they knew was coming, went unheeded by the government. And now we have a leading specialist at the Sussex County referring to the situation as ‘terrifyingly bad’. So bad that many staff are incapacitated with Covid, while many of those remaining are suffering from the traumatising effects of having to watch patients die, in their hundreds, despite all their best efforts to save them. This government will go down in the record books as being one of the most incompetent and incapable administration in living memory, only being rivalled by that of Neville Chamberlain, trumpeting ‘peace in our time’ shortly before the onset of the Second World War. But the Johnson government is not merely incompetent, if that were not bad enough, but it is totally callous as well. In spite of spending nearly ten weeks being cared for by dedicated NHS staff, many of those weeks in intensive care, Johnson cannot bring himself to argue for a pay rise for those same staff, instead being content to, briefly, join the Thursday evening clap until such times as he could decently excuse himself from the inconvenience of standing on the doorstep, later declaring that he ‘doesn’t believe in gestures’. And in the meantime, the covert restructuring of the NHS goes on apace, the most graphic example being the appointment, in August, in the midst of the pandemic, of Tory peer Dido Harding as the head of a new body set up to replace Public Health England, a move some have compared to re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. The analogy doesn’t stop there, as Harding has hit a few icebergs in her time, not least presiding over the national test-track-and-trace system that has cost an estimated £10 billion and been such a lamentable failure. And we have a local example of such deckchair re-arranging, the proposed merger of Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (WSHNFT) with the Brighton and Sussex University Hospital Trust (BSUHT), the trust that runs the Sussex County and the Royal Alexandra in Haywards Heath. In the middle of a pandemic, with almost every ward in the County given over to looking after Covid patients, and people with life-threatening conditions having their scheduled operations postponed, the Western Sussex management is engaged in a full-blown takeover of BSUHT, ploughing ahead with submitting a Full Business Case to the bosses at NHS England and devoting enormous energy and resources that would be better deployed in focussing on how to beat this pandemic. Already there have been some muted concerns raised about the creation of this super-trust, in the pages of the Argus as well as in other quarters, but no one has fully explored the implications of creating a health service body that is proposed to extend its remit from Chichester in the west to Haywards Heath in the north, with the possibility of some services in East Sussex being swept into the mix as well; Lewes Victoria Hospital in East Sussex is part of the BSUHT. If this was a merger of two banks, or two transport firms or construction companies, senior figures in the business world would be jumping up and down and calling for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to examine the implications with a fine toothcomb, but a multi-million-pound merger of several NHS trusts, affecting at least 1.2 million people, and nobody says a dickie bird? At the very least there needs to be a public consultation, and an impact assessment, and it is those people who are elected to represent their constituents in all the affected areas, the local MPs and councillors, who should be raising the rafters with questions about the implications of the merger, and demanding answers, before this smash-and-grab raid by Western Sussex Hospitals trust goes any further. And one of the first questions that needs to be answered is, why should the staff in BSUHT have to undergo the worry and uncertainty of being transferred from one trust to another, a TUPE transfer, where all their employment terms and conditions are going to be changed, in the middle of a pandemic, and having that on their plate as well as all the other concerns referred to elsewhere in this letter. Yours sincerely, Stephen Guy Sussex Defend the NHS Now NHS staff, patients, and families are paying a huge price. We won't fall for divide and rule propaganda which points the finger at the public. This crisis is caused by chronic underfunding in the NHS and a sustained attack on the public sector including the NHS itself.
Local NHS Trust mergers - major reorganisation at time of crisis and with no real consultation26/11/2020 Extraordinarily, given the enormous strain the hospitals are under, the CEO of Western Sussex Hospitals Marianne Griffiths, who now also heads up Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust, is steaming ahead with a merger of both Trusts and a major reorganisation of facilities and services. So-called 'mergers' always lead to hospital closures in the name of 'rationalisation', BSUHT staff will face contract transfers, and staff and patients are likely to have to travel further. Campaign groups across Sussex have called for a halt to these plans until there has been a full and meaningful consultation with the public and a detailed impact assessment.
Show your support for #NHSPay15 and Brighton NHS Campaign for Pay Justice - get in touch and join their twitter feed, sign their petitions or join their work actions. Meet with other NHS workers on line through Keep Our NHS Public Staff Voices. Even if you are not a health worker, this support is crucial. Portering staff are fighting back at a hospital in Birmingham Heartlands Hospital against unagreed changes to their contracts - how you can support them and sign their petition here and see the video from Red Banner theatre. Migrants still face being charged for health care and their access to the Covid vaccine is threatened. More info and suggested actions - email us or contact MedAct or Patients Not Passports. Very vulnerable Asylum Seekers are being held in old army barracks in the UK and denied human rights: read more and sign the petition Join in with events listed (see Calendar page) including this one, a patient-led campaign.  WHAT ARE THEY UP TO NOW? Free University Brighton sessions for all those who care about the NHS5/11/2020 The Government response to the Covid crisis has exposed the true face of its strategy for the NHS with £ billions handed over to the private sector, much of it wasted. The first session will give us the opportunity to consider, discuss and with a short quiz test our knowledge of the nature and extent of the private takeover and its implications for NHS staff and patients.
The ultimate aim of Government strategy for the NHS and the accelerated privatisation drive, has always been the introduction of charging for NHS services. It is also the major stumbling block. The second session will explore the ways in which the Covid crisis is being used to further the charging agenda, the role played by the rapidly expanding use of digital applications and how we can combat it. Summary of FUB session on Friday 13th November: here Send a message to the House of Lords to protect the NHS from a US trade deal
https://weownit.org.uk/ask-house-lords-pass-nhs-protection-amendment-today  In September we took part in two important and safely organised marches and rallies in Brighton: Pay Justice for NHS Workers; and Brighton Black Lives Matter.
The Pay Justice for NHS Workers march (above) was again called by local nurses, with the support of the GMB Union. It was impressive, with health workers and supporters marching from Hove through Brighton town centre. Shoppers in Churchill Square joined their silent tribute to the 600 colleagues in Britain who have lost their lives in the Covid epidemic, and listened to a rallying call for a 15% pay rise. Outrageously, nurses and other NHS workers have even been left out of the token rise awarded to other public sector workers in the summer. The campaign continues: more action is planned for the end of October, so let organisers or ourselves know if you can support in any way, and keep an eye via Facebook, and our website. End the Hostile Environment! End racism in the NHS! The plight of migrants taking increasingly dangerous journeys and being denied a safe haven in the UK was highlighted by speakers in the Brighton Black Lives Matter march and rally on Hove Lawns (above). About 1000 people listened with rapt attention while speakers and poets illustrated their own and other's experiences of institutional and direct racism. Racism impacts health workers and health services. A recent example is reported in The Guardian: a consultant has accused an NHS Trust in Birmingham of forcing him into enslavement after making an unfounded and racist allegation of fraud against him that was later dropped. At the Brighton Black Lives Matter rally, Sussex Defend the NHS and Brighton & Hove Stand Up to Racism highlighted the campaign by NHS workers in local hospitals to re-establish their staff-led BME Network, against the opposition of the CEO. Organisers in the BME Network want to hear from members of the community who work for Brighton and Sussex Hospital Trust, so please get in touch if you would like to hear more: bmenetworkactiongroup@gmail.com Meanwhile the so-called coronavirus 'exemption' from charging and immigration checks is not working. Migrants are too fearful of the Hostile Environment to come forward, and face many other barriers to accessing health care during the pandemic. Join with MedAct, Patients not Passports and Stand Up to Racism to keep up the pressure against the appalling racist policies pursued so vigorously by this government and its Home Secretary. A weekend of community action is planned in Hastings on October 10th to welcome refugees. Will the NHS survive this government's reckless privatisations? Now it's shifting the blame for failures in its centralised Track and Trace system onto the public health framework which its predecessors devised and which it then deliberately starved of funds.
There's the looming disaster of the Trade Deals with the United States: join Global Justice Now's on-line book launch on Tuesday 1st September to learn what's coming and how to stop it. Then there's the huge leak of funds into the private hospital sector. The government is currently giving £400m each month to private hospitals to 'support the NHS' i.e. to keep beds available in the case of a surge in Coronavirus admissions. But these beds are currently empty - private hospitals are in no rush to start operating. It's good news for companies like Spire Healthcare (who own the Montefiore in Hove) who were making a loss before the pandemic struck. Their share price is rising! Now a contract worth £10bn is being mooted to buy operations for the NHS in private hospitals: long waiting lists will be a huge bonus for them in the long run. Write to your MP and CCGs and demand full knowledge and scrutiny of these deals, or we may never see the NHS recover. There's never been a time when getting involved and active has been more important: the challenges are daunting but we are fighting for something very, very precious. Please join us on the events listed in the calendar below, forward this newsletter to your contacts and get in touch if you want to help campaign.
A major merger of Trusts in Brighton, Haywards Heath and Chichester and Worthing is underway and is bound to bring new threats to services and jobs. If you'd like to hear from a worker's perspective and meet campaigners across East and West Sussex too, join the Regional NHS campaigns planning meeting on 14th September - details here.  In 2018 for the 70th Anniversary of the NHS, Sussex Defend the NHS gathered more than 2000 testimonies from local residents about what the NHS meant to them.
Displaying the scroll in its entirety for the first time on 5th July 2020 was our way of saying Thank You to all our NHS staff and other care workers for what they’ve done during for us during the Covid crisis. It is a 110-metre-long illustration of how important the NHS is to everyone in this country – and how critical it is to support it properly in the future. This year our appreciation was deepened by knowledge of the lives lost to Covid 19 of health and care workers and disproportionately those from black and minority ethnic communities. We are angry too, that many deaths could have been avoided if the government had locked down sooner, hadn’t neglected its pandemic stockpile, hadn’t abandoned Social Care services to the private sector and their hedge funds, hadn’t delayed publishing its report’s recommendations on safeguarding BAME workers, and hadn’t decimated the public structures available for testing, tracing and tracking. After everything which has been sacrificed, we see the government cynically using the crisis and its aftermath to accelerate privatisation, giving huge contracts to the likes of Serco and DeLoitte and Internet giants for badly- functioning test and trace systems. It’s trying to bail out and boost the for-profit Private Hospital sector by handing over all elective surgery, threatening that temporary reductions in NHS provision are made permanent. And it’s pushing with all its might for the expansion of on-line services to replace GP and out-patient appointments, in the interest of its US and other lobbyists in the private on-line health care sector. And all this further enabled by its US Trade Deals.
Accelerating Privatisation After everything which has been sacrificed, we see the government cynically using the crisis and its aftermath to accelerate privatisation, giving huge contracts to the likes of Serco and DeLoitte and Internet giants for badly- functioning test and trace systems. It’s trying to bail out and boost the for-profit Private Hospital sector by handing over all elective surgery, threatening that temporary reductions in NHS provision are made permanent. And it’s pushing with all its might for the expansion of on-line services to replace GP and out-patient appointments, in the interest of its US and other lobbyists in the private on-line health care sector. And all this further enabled by its US Trade Deals. So, what can we do? If you work in health or social care: keep active in your Union and demand better pay and conditions for health and social-care workers; campaign against migrant-charging Join up with Nurses United or People before Profit Covid Activists group Publicise and join some of the events listed on Calendar page, and encourage others to sign up to our campaign group. (Please only attend events if you are currently well, are not in a Covid high risk group, and are satisfied you can keep a safe distance). Take a look at this official local survey from Sussex Health Care Commissioners, which tries to elicit your approval of on-line services, and think about what may be lost if you opt for them. Display your placards and posters Demand answers from the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee and Health and Wellbeing Board (Wed 15th July and Tues 28th July, Hove Town Hall) Unions say increase would make staff feel more valued and help boost flagging economy
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/03/unions-call-for-early-pay-rise-for-nhs-staff We are proud of Brighton's massive turn out for #BlackLivesMatter. Sussex Defend the NHS is pleased to have been part of this 10,000 strong event. You can read our solidarity statement here - and we want to highlight what you, as anti-racist NHS campaigners, can do now.
You can join us in campaigning to scrap extended charging in the NHS, including the NHS surcharge. This latest report from MedAct shows how the hostile environment is still causing fear and lack of access to healthcare for migrants - to the detriment of all of us. The Government was forced to scrap the NHS surcharge for NHS workers, but we support the call to scrap this charge for all migrant workers...please tell your MP that you do too! You can also join the call for an independent inquiry into the disproportionate number of BAME deaths from Covid 19. Public Health England recently published their 'disparities report' but it was thanks to a whistleblower that we now know that there were pages missing, and that this missing section pointed to racism as a major contributing factor. This scandal must be exposed - more than 200 NHS and social care staff have died, with more than 60% of deaths being BAME staff yet BAME staff make up 20% of the workforce. Please sign this petition and write to your MP too.  Sussex Defend in the news:
We held two physically distanced events to support key workers such as teachers in their demands for No Going Back until it's Safe. There was cross union support for this demand and support from NHS workers opposed to a public sector pay freeze. 'Johnson and Hancock: Don't clap for the NHS then slap us with a Pay Freeze!' It's clear that we can no longer say that there is 'creeping privatisation' in the NHS. Covid 19 has been a cover for a full scale privatisation onslaught.
We don't have the space here to go into all the private contacts awarded, all the links to the friends of Dominic Cummings, all the US health and tech giants (stealing our data) or all the appauling failures this is leading to (Track and Trace app not ready until September...) but the fabulous Lowdown keeps a keen eye on these matters. Rest assured we are campaigning on this too...as are NHS campaigners across the country. The NHS birthday on 5th July is a good opportunity to campaign and say: The NHS Deserves Better! For up-to-date info on how the NHS is coping with coronavirus http://www.nhscampaign.org/news-and-views.html
 As a support worker I am truly grateful and humbled by the support shown by communities and celebrities alike up and down the country. It is truly a very humbling and emotional moment every Thursday night .... to be appreciated for what has only just recently been branded an unskilled job. The levels of support shown for our NHS and other keyworkers has been absolutely incredible and we cannot thank you enough.
But in respect to our politicians standing on the doorstep applauding. We need action, not applause! We need you to pay us what we truly deserve. We struggle financially, often working back to back shifts with no overtime rates, to try and make ends meet with the spiralling costs of living. Hasn’t the pandemic of Coronavirus shown you all that our time is worth much more You have repeatedly blocked pay rises for nurses, even cheering as a result. You have cut the funds for Social Care. Read the full article here https://anappealforchangeblog.wordpress.com/2020/04/26/dear-politicians-save-yourself-the-trouble-of-clapping/ |
AuthorSussex Defend the NHS Archives
February 2021
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