The 999 Call for NHS is the people’s campaign for the NHS inspired by a group of local mums from Darlington. Joanna responded to the Emergency Call for NHS and the 999 Call for the NHS campaign was launched at the first rally in Darlington July 2013. Since then the 999 call for NHS have joined thousands of NHS campaigners across the country who are all responding to the 999 call for NHS.
Now, in the run up to a lobby of Labour Party conference in Manchester tomorrow, they have linked with NHS, trade union and Labour Party activists from around the country in calling on Labour to act. They have backed a statement which they urge others to sign. It reads as follows:
We are campaigning for a clear commitment from the Labour Party to saving the National Health Service.
We want to stop and reverse privatisation, and rebuild the NHS as a comprehensive public service providing for all on the basis of need – not a logo above a marketplace of profit-making companies.
We welcome Labour’s pledge to repeal the Health and Social Care Act and its key “competition regulations” promoting marketisation – and to restore the ministerial duty to provide national health services. We also welcome Andy Burnham’s commitment that the NHS must be protected from international “free trade” agreements.
But to rebuild the NHS we need more. We need a major drive to undo the damage done by the Act, and before that by years of policies shifting the NHS towards a market system, like the obscenely wasteful “internal market”, widespread privatisation and outsourcing, and fragmentation into competing units. We want a fight to bring contracts already in the hands of private companies back into the NHS. We want an end to the Private Finance Initiative and liberation from crushing PFI debts. We want an end to cash-driven closures, reversal of cuts and adequate funding to rebuild the NHS as a genuine public service.
Such policies are necessary to restore a comprehensive NHS providing a top quality health service for all, as well as decent terms and conditions for its workers. We support a Living Wage and a mandatory minimum staffing ratio of one nurse to every four patients.
We want reversal of the Coalition’s attacks on migrants’ access to the NHS. We want integration of health and social care to mean that social care becomes a public service.
We are supporting the lobby of Labour Party conference in Manchester on 21 September, and want to build an ongoing alliance of NHS campaigners, Labour Party activists and trade unions/trade unionists to fight for these goals.
Signatories include:
People’s March for the NHS
999 call for the NHS (Darlo mums)
Wendy Savage, Keep Our NHS Public President
Kate Osamor, NHS worker, Unite activist and Labour Party national executive committee-elect
Christine Shawcroft, Labour Party national executive committee, Nottingham South Constituency Labour Party secretary
Colin Standfield, on behalf of Ealing Hospital SOS
Dr Louise Irvine, Chair of Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign
Owen Jones, writer and activist
Hackney Keep Our NHS Public
Leeds Keep Our NHS Public
East Kent Keep Our NHS Public
North East Keep Our NHS Public
Save Our NHS East London
Save Our NHS Manchester Students
Stephanie Clarke and Jenny Shepherd, on behalf of Save Calderdale Royal Hospital
Anita Downs, Unite SE London Medical branch secretary, Save Lewisham Hospital steering committee
John McDonnell MP
Councillor Joanne Harding, on behalf of Stretford and Urmston CLP
Councillor Karen Jewitt, on behalf of Croydon North CLP
Christina Sosseh, Chair, Save Milton Keynes Hospital Campaign
Caroline Molloy, OurNHS openDemocracy editor
Nick Palmer, Labour prospective parliamentary candidate, Broxtowe
Peter Fisher, NHS Consultants’ Association president
Dr Jacky Davis, NHS Consultants’ Association co-chair
Dr Ron Singer, Medical Practioners Union (Unite) chair
Waïda Forman, Labour councillor in Harlow, Unison branch Secretary at Princess Alexandra Hospital, Harlow Trades Council chair
Kevin Bennett, Labour councillor in Warrington, Unite activist
Steve Battlemuch, Labour councillor, Nottingham City
Andrea Oates, Labour councillor, Broxtowe
Greg Marshall, Labour councillor, Broxtowe
Nathan Morrison, Labour councillor, Aberdeen
Chris Marks, PCS union North West Regional Organiser
Ron Mendel, Northampton Reclaim Our NHS chair and Northampton Trades Council President
John Sweeney, UCATT East of England Political Co-ordinator
Professor Alwyn Smith
Andrew Fisher, LEAPeconomics / Croydon Central CLP
Professor Robert Moore, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, The University of Liverpool
Michael Coleman, Professor Epidemiology and Vital Statistics, Cancer Research UK Cancer Survival Group, Department of Non-Communicable Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Daniel Cooper, NUS National Executive Committee
James Elliott, NUS NEC
Dan Young, Chair, London Young Labour
Dr Alex Scott-Samuel, joint chair, Politics of Health Group
To add your or your organisation’s name or for more information, email nhsliaison@yahoo.co.uk or ring 07796 690 874
