Tweet It is appalling that the recent NHS privatisation regulations have now been passed, despite a broad-based and vigorous campaign against them. The Regulations, made under Section 75 of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, essentially require all NHS services to be put out to competition unless there is only one provider capable of delivering [...]
Posts under ‘Health’
EU Health Regulations – improving patients’ rights or more NHS privatisation in disguise?
May 6th, 2013 by Lucy Anderson.
NHS Commissioning: Why You Should Care
May 1st, 2013 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Tweet One of the reasons the government have had an easy ride over its plans for the systematic looting of the NHS by Tory-friendly private health companies is the sheer complexity of their restructuring. Unlike, say, the Department for Work and Pensions, where there is a single bureaucracy responsible for administering a particular public service [...]
Watch: the local press, the left and the community come together to defend hospital
Mar 21st, 2013 by Newsdesk.Tweet In the wake of Leveson, this film from the Camden New Journal and Islington Tribune shows just how important local newspapers can be. The papers played a huge part in the campaign to save the Whittington Hospital in Archway two years ago – and now they’re doing the same again. Their part has made [...]
Why we’re marching to save our hospital today
Mar 16th, 2013 by Newsdesk.Tweet From 11.30am today, demonstrators will assemble at Highbury Corner in north London, to march to save the Whittington Hospital. Here, the Defend Whittington Hospital Coalition explain why: In 2010, our massive campaign overturned the government’s proposals to get rid of our Accident and Emergency, Paediatrics, Maternity and Intensive Care services at the Whittington Hospital. [...]
The compulsive radio of a fascinating, worrying interview
Feb 16th, 2013 by Keir McCormack.Tweet “I’m a painfully truthful person often to the point of self-immolation or self-destruction,” said Julie Burchill appearing on Desert Island Discs. Burchill was bound to draw an audience, and only a few weeks after the BBC programme hosted its dream guest Aung San Suu Kyi. We were certainly in for some self-immolation. Burchill’s mantra [...]
First anniversary of GMB strike action against Carillion
Feb 14th, 2013 by Andy Newman.Tweet Today is the anniversary of the first of 22 days of strike action by GMB members at the Great Western Hospital (GWH) in Swindon, one of the earliest Private Finance Initiative (PFI) build and operate hospitals, and only the second opened by Carillion. This long running industrial dispute between the union and Carillion, over [...]
Call for “direct action” to save Whittington Hospital, after huge public meeting
Feb 13th, 2013 by John Millington.Tweet Islington local residents have been urged to launch a campaign of direct action including occupations to save Whittington hospital. Unite South Eastern Regional secretary, Peter Kavanagh, made the call following a packed Save Whittington Hospital public meeting in Islington last night. The Board of the Whittington NHS Trust took the decision to sell off £17 million [...]
Keogh & Lewisham point up ugly face of NHS marketisation
Jan 29th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Tweet By coincidence two quite different processes are dramatising simultaneously the market shocks now being applied relentlessly to the NHS. Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS clinical director, is demanding that hospital closures must be accepted in order to concentrate scarce specialist skills ‘for the good of the patient’. The buzzword for this latest upheaval is [...]
Fight for our local hospitals – or we’ll lose the human touch
Jan 25th, 2013 by Lucy Reese.Tweet At the end of last year I felt a bit tired. I’d been working hard, looking after the kids and doing a lot of political stuff on top of it. I felt I was spreading myself too thin – something had to give and the politics seemed the obvious choice. But sadly, in the [...]
Tax avoiders must be prohibited from the NHS
Jan 19th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Tweet Only the Tories would be brazen enough to use the NHS as another source of tax avoidance. But that’s exactly what they are doing, with a report going to Hunt later this month recommending that private companies which have always paid corporation tax and VAT on supplies to the NHS should now be exempted [...]
