RCN and the health bill

Wrote to the Nursing Standard yesterday. The RCN leadership is appallingly right wing and it is bizarre to think that a General Secretary of a union could be comfortable with privatisation and all it entails.

Dear Editor,

Campaigners are right to criticise the RCN leadership for their strange position supporting the NHS Bill (Letters NS 17/8) and a second letter last week on NHS pensions demonstrates why.  The comments by the private sector manager that the NHS is bloated and that nurses are paid much more than their private sector colleagues should strike fear into all nurses who thought that Andrew Lansley's bill would be good for nursing.

The Health Bill is a blueprint for privatisation. It picks up on the work that Labour has done over the past ten years and takes it to new heights, opening the NHS to becoming rapidly privatised. Over the past few years we have witnessed a hospital being put out to tender to be run by a private company and we can expect much more in the future. Community providers will be no different.

The RCN leadership should be ashamed of backing a bill that will undermines the pay and conditions of its members. Nurses need to speak out, unless you think you are overpaid and your pension is too big, of course.

Stuart Jeffery RN
Health Spokesperson for the Green Party

63rd birthday of the National Health Service

July 5th is the 63rd birthday of the National Health Service and the revised Health Bill going through parliament means the end of the NHS as we all know it. Today Greens and Trade Unionists will march on parliament to demand an end to the proposed privatisation of the NHS.

Stuart Jeffery, Green Party Health Spokesperson said: "At 63, the NHS should be in the prime of its life, enjoying the fruits of clinical maturity and basking in the glory of a world class service. Sadly the NHS is under attack by the Tories and Lib Dems like never before. As it tries to celebrate its 63rd birthday the new Health and Social Care bill promises to privatise services and turn the National Health Service into a National Health Insurance scheme."

Stuart Jeffery continued, "Despite rhetoric by Cameron and Lansley suggesting the NHS will not be privatised or subject to increased competition, along with claims of saving the NHS by Clegg, the new Health Bill is no different to the first one. Privatisation will follow competition as the buzzwords of the NHS at 70.

Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion commented: "Labour cannot now mount a principled defence of the NHS since, when they were in power, they welcomed in private healthcare providers and saddled the NHS with huge debts through PFI schemes. Labour started the ball rolling on a transition towards NHS privatisation - now the Tory-led government is taking us ever further down that road".

Green Party Health Spokesperson, Stuart Jeffery concluded: "Not only does Lansley's bill destroy the fabric of what should be the pinnacle of public service, but his bill absolves him of responsibility for it. His duty to provide medical services, which was enshrined in the 1946 NHS Act, will be scrapped under his new bill. Government should not shirk its responsibility for providing health care. This would be an appalling dereliction of duty.

"These are not good birthday presents for the NHS."

Green Party responds to NHS ‘listening exercise’ outcomes

Greens today responded to the results of the coalition's ‘listening exercise', after Nick Clegg claimed victory for the Lib Dems in saving the NHS.
Speaking at the Commissioning Show in London this morning, health secretary Andrew Lansley once again tried to justify NHS reform by criticising current performance, for example on cancer survival rates [1], despite such claims being rebutted months ago [2]. On top of this, there are serious concerns that, while watered down, the role of watchdog Monitor could act as a Trojan horse for future privatisation [3].
It is important that Lansley's health and social care bill has been challenged, and that health professionals have been given a chance to voice their concerns. However, even with apparent concessions the bill fails to present a sensible vision for improving our national health service.
Caroline Lucas MP said:
"There have been some concessions, but many appear to be contradictory - like allowing ‘any qualified provider' to bid for NHS work while at the same time maintaining that cherry picking will not be allowed. Unsurprisingly, there are no details from the Government about which of their contradictory promises will come out on top. I will be scrutinising the amendments to the legislation and pushing for changes wherever possible, but my fear is that this Bill is still rotten from the core - and riddled with problems that have not really been addressed."
Stuart Jeffery, health spokesperson for the Green Party, said:
"There has been no U-turn by the coalition, just weasel words that appear to change the emphasis of the bill while keeping Andrew Lansley's market reforms on track. He may be planning to de-emphasise competition in Monitor's role, yet he wants the NHS Commissioning Board to ensure choice and competition. Moving the job of promoting competition from one organisation to another is not a change of heart.
"He is now suggesting that Monitor's primary duty is to ‘protect and promote the interests of patients'. That is surely the job of clinicians and politicians, not the role of the current economic regulator for Foundation Trusts. Monitor does not have the skills to do that, as Mid Staffs has shown."
Stuart continued:
"Despite the spin that tries to quell the fear of privatisation, he wants to ensure that ‘Any Qualified Provider' can make profits at the expense of the NHS. With a market approach to health care, the relentless drive towards privatisation is assured despite the political rhetoric.
"The changes are clearly muddled and designed to mislead. The bill should be binned. We need an NHS based on service provision, not on market principles."

===
Notes
1. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/blog/2011/jun/15/nhs-reforms-live-blog
2. See http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d566.full
3. See http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/MP-warns-U-turn-NHS-reforms/story-12766652-detail/story.html

Cameron compares NHS with European healthcare

David Cameron is expected to state, in a speech tomorrow on the coalition’s NHS reforms that elsewhere in Europe, health systems work more effectively. (1)

 

Stuart Jeffery, Health Spokesperson for the Green Party, said:

 

“Perhaps he means France or Germany, who both have a system of state insurance and private health care providers, similar to the one proposed in the health bill.

 

“France and Germany, along with most countries in Western Europe, spend significantly more of their income on health care than the UK, 20% more in Germany and 25% more in France.

 

“Increasing the UK's spending on health to Western European levels would see an investment of £20bn in the NHS, yet the Conservatives are planning savings of £20bn.

 

“Perhaps he will talk about clinical effectiveness. In that case, let's hope he doesn’t regurgitate false statistics and lies that he managed to spout the last time he made claims about the clinical effectiveness of the NHS."

 

“The NHS does need reform. It needs to bring service back into its heart. It needs to scrap the expensive pseudo-market, and it needs to be held to account by local people.”

 

--

 

Notes

 

1) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8558474/David-Cameron-puts-reputation-on-the-line-with-five-pledges-on-the-future-of-the-NHS.html

 

NHS Listening Exercise

The Green Party have called for the end to the NHS market and an end to private profit in their submission to the NHS listening exercise.

"Service" must be at the heart of the National Health Service, rather than the insurance system that the government plans to turn the NHS into.

Stuart Jeffery, health spokesperson for the Green Party, said:

"The health care market has been a costly failure. Since the introduction of the market into the NHS, management costs have risen from 5% to around 14%, with no benefits to patients. People don't want a choice of provider when they need care. They simply want good quality local services that they can access quickly and easily.

"Far from driving up standards, competition will promote the cheapest health care options and therefore the lowest quality, with any savings going into the profits of private companies.

"Successive governments have used the the market to dismantle the NHS and bring in private companies. This has only benefited corporations, not patients or taxpayers.

"The NHS needs reform, but Andrew Lansley's health bill will destroy the NHS and turn it into an Americanised insurance system. NHS reforms should return the NHS to public provision and scrap the health care market."

See the Green Party website for the letter.

My letter in yesterday's Guardian

My letter in yesterday's Guardian:


Turning the wheel slightly and easing off from the accelerator are not signs that Andrew Lansley will steer the NHS away from the cliff edge of privatisation (Report, 23 May). His plan must be stopped before we lose our NHS to market management. Of course, the true driver for this sorry state of affairs is the prime minister, who has overall responsibility for the actions of his cabinet colleagues. If Cameron and Lansley are able to turn the NHS into a full-blown insurance scheme, it will be a car crash.

Stuart Jeffery
Green Party health spokesperson

38 Degrees: NHS

38 Degrees are continuing their campaign to save the NHS. I have written the following to my MP:

Do you agree that if the government is serious about "listening" on its NHS plans, then it has to promise to rule out price competition between providers? So many experts warn that this could be destructive and will get in the way of patient care.

Do you agree that spending between £5bn and £15bn each year simply to run the health market is a waste of money that should be put into patient care?

Do you agree that private providers can only make a profit at the expense of NHS ones by cherry picking operations and having a skewed tariff?

Do you agree that GPs are going to face conflicts of interests with their patients and that patients' trust in GPs will decline?

The NHS should focus on co-operation to provide quality care, not private companies competing on price.

Please will you contact Andrew Lansley and raise my concerns with him?

Nurses need to get organised and take action

The Nursing Times campaign to get nurses on the boards of the new GP Consortia highlights a real problem that the nursing profession has. There is very little voice, very little activism and very little political organisation.

The Royal College of Nursing seems to remain firmly in the pocket of government, despite being the biggest nursing union. I was shocked a few years back when the RCN backed privatisation of health care:

"The RCN is not idiologically opposed to the private, independent and voluntary sectors and accepts that they can have a legitimate role to play in the NHS..." fortunately "....The RCN is opposed to the wholescale privatisation of the NHS."

So the biggest nursing union was happy for services to be privatised. Their statement on Andrew Lansley's White Paper was slightly more reassuring, but they are still missing the passion and drive to stand up and be counted. They are hardly a voice for radical change.

There is a real lack of campaign groups that focus on getting a nursing voice across. A quick google search revealed just one: Nurses For Reform - an ultra right wing pressure group motivated by profit not care. Where is the left leaning alternative? Where is the group fighting for whistleblower rights? Where is the group campaigning for human rights? Where is the group campaigning political change?

We need nurses putting joint letters into the national press. The docs are very good at this, but I don't see nurses organised like this. The comment on a NT piece epitomises the problem:

"It is alright say speak up, but I have been dismissed twice, when employed less than the statutory 12mths for just suggesting change, being seen to make waves, and with a mortgage and children to support it isn't that easy to keep being proactive."

I suspect much of the problem stems from a historical oppression of women and of lower paid workers, however this makes the struggle even more important. The students have risen to the challenge and it is time for nurses to organise and be heard.

Independent Review for Maternity in Maidstone

Good news for Maidstone, the Secretary of State has agreed to review the plan to chnage maternity services at Maidstone Hospital. This has just appeared in the KM.

MASH at Downing St

A cross party delegation from Maidstone will accompany MASH to Downing St this morning to present thousands of signatures against the move of obstetric (doctor led maternity) services to Pembury from Maidstone. I will be joining Peter Carroll, Helen Grant, Rav Seerthrum, Maidstone's parliamentary candidates, plus Sarah Waters, local community campaigner, Heather, Mary and Anna.

Although I am a great supporter of midwifery led maternity care (child birth should not be medicalised unless there is a very good reason), it does seem strange to only have an obstetrics unit at Pembury rather than in Maidstone. Maidstone has much higher deprivation than Tunbridge Wells, a higher and younger population, and must have the greater number of births. The two sites are 17 miles apart, a route that takes around 40 minutes by car on a good day, an hour on the bus and two changes by train. Realistically, it would be better to have obstetrics provided at both sites.

Reinstate Margaret Haywood

A couple of weeks ago Mark Thomas brought his People's Manifesto tour to Maidstone and Maidstone voted for "Nurse whistle blowers should be supported not sacked". As well as building the People's Manifesto, part of the deal is that Mark has to campaign to get the pledges delivered on. Mark has asked me to help him with this one, so...

to start with can I urge people to sign the various petitions and join campaigns to support Margaret Haywood:

Number 10
RCN

Also email your MP to sign the Early Day Motion.

And join the Facebook group

And if you missed the Panorama programme, see it again here.

Nurse whistleblowers should be backed not sacked!

41

The solistice and my 41st year are now both over. While electoral success has eluded me, the rest of the year has been very eventful:

I managed to be in breach of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act while demonstrating against NHS privatisation (the rozzers were quite pleasant about it and let us carry on for half an hour before asking us to stop).

They were less pleasant during the climate camp week. A two hour wait to be searched in Kingsnorth was un-called for. Tapping my phone conversations prior to a demo outside Allington was equally bizarre. The £5.7 million has meant that police services will be cut in Kent. Clearly the climate campers were a dangerous lot - 12 police injuries, four from direct contact with protesters (hardly surprising given the way the police charged the camp), eight from wasp stings, sun stroke and the like. Also in 2008, the Kingsnorth Six got aquitted only to have the government now trying to appeal. Importantly, 2008 was the year that the climate frontier came to Kent and it looks set to stay too.

A highlight was getting published in the Internation Journal of Cuban Studies (a piece on peak oil and health care).

The campaign for ethical investments at KCC scored a victory with their adoption of the UN's Principles of Responsible Investment.

Here's to a busy and exciting 42nd year!