Tax the rich to save the Health Service!

Submitted by Matthew on 14 January, 2015 - 11:58 Author: Sacha Ismail

Spurred by waiting times in Accident & Emergency departments which are the worst since records began in 2004, the Tories have promised an extra £2 billion a year above inflation for the health service.

Labour says it will go £2.5 billion a year above that (funded by a mansion tax, a levy on tobacco companies and closing tax loopholes). Both are completely inadequate

NHS boss Simon Stevens says that the NHS will need at least £8 billion a year above inflation even with dramatic “efficiency savings” – by which he means attacks on NHS workers.

“Efficiency” could have a different meaning however: clearing out the tangle of market-driven bureaucracy which sprouted under New Labour and burgeoned under the Coalition’s Health and Social Care Act.

We need to challenge our trade union leaders’ reliance on the Labour leaders to save the NHS. The labour movement must demand a thoroughgoing reversal of marketisation and privatisation, and adequate funding to rebuild the NHS as a comprehensive public service. The money is there, in the hands of the rich.

Tax the rich – equalise the wealth – save the NHS!

Hitchingbrooke privatisation ends in fiasco

Three years ago Hinchingbrooke hospital, in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, became the first NHS hospital to be handed over to private management.

On 8-9 January 2015 it became the first NHS hospital to be put into “special measures” by the Care Quality Commission, on grounds of being “inadequate” for patient safety; and the private contractor, Circle, walked away from its contract, accepting a heavy loss.

No other hospital should be contracted out in the same way. The process of contracting out Hinchingbrooke began under the last Labour government, although it was completed under the Cameron regime.

Win on pay will help our fight to restore NHS

By an NHS union rep

It’s not easy for NHS workers to go on strike. The union leaders and many of the members are fearful of negative publicity and harm to our patients.

The unions spend so much time portraying themselves as an insurance service, and are so poorly organised, that many members hardly understand that there should be reps, let alone who they are. So why would they give up their salaries for a third day of industrial action, just to try to get a one per cent pay rise?

Yet the NHS pay dispute is escalating. It started timidly with two days of four-hour strikes. But now there will be a 12 hour strike on 29 January, followed by a 24 hour strike on 25 February involving most of the unions in the NHS.

There were problems with the two four hour strikes, in some areas unions scuppered their own action by granting lavish “exemptions”, encouraging many members to go to work.

But outside the hospitals there have been union flags of different colours combining with local NHS community campaign banners, and constant beeping from local traffic to signal support for the NHS and its workers. Often the picket lines have been mini demonstrations. On some level the strike has had an effect.

The next strike action is for 12 hours, so those on the picket lines won’t have to dismantle their rallies and run back to their clock-watching manager in the middle of the morning. This time we’ll have the whole day to plan the rallies and marches.

But a strike is supposed to be the withdrawal of labour. Unions should aim for solid strike action in all areas where they have members. If they find that would make crucial clinical areas unsafe, then local discussions and decisions on how to ensure patient safety should be organised locally, preferably by the workers in the clinical area who understand the service.

Workers run the NHS every day. By and large managers have little idea about the practicalities. On strike days, wherever possible, workers should be in charge of deciding what if any service needs to be provided.

Members need workplace meetings not just to elect reps, but to guide the reps. Every rep should take advantage of the ongoing dispute to organise meetings, to discuss how the day should happen, and feed this back into the union. In the areas where there is no rep, the branch should encourage someone to take charge at least for the strike days. After the strikes an increasingly organised union can be in better shape to continue to take on issues as they arise locally and nationally.

The fight for the NHS is mostly being done by community campaigns. But there is an army of workers who are experts in knowing what is needed for our patients. Workers in the NHS hold the keys to its survival.

We need to use the current dispute not just to defend our terms and conditions – starting with the measly one per cent — but most crucially to advertise, recruit to and organise our unions. Once organised the unions will be fit to take on the life-saving task of fighting to save our NHS!

If you work in the NHS, get involved in the union, and be part of this fight. If you do not, then support us please. We will not achieve the level of organisation we need by 29 January, but help us have vibrant day long demonstrations to support the NHS outside every hospital!

Behind A&E queues: a joined-up crisis

By a doctor

Northumbria Healthcare Trust recently asked patients to attend the Accident and Emergency only for serious health emergencies and life threatening illness.

Across England, at least eight hospitals have declared “major incidents” to block the influx of patients to A&E departments. “Major incident” declarations are usually reserved for natural disasters or major accidents.

Accident and Emergency admissions were up by approximately 5% over the holiday period. But that is roughly comparable to previous years. Attendances are actually down compared to July and August this year. Even hospital admissions are down compared to the summer months.

There are fewer patients turning up at A&E, and fewer needing to be admitted, than in July. Why is there a crisis? If the statistics show that the pressure on Accident and Emergencies has not been building through the front door, then we must look elsewhere for the cause.

There are thousands of people (usually elderly) who have recovered from the ailment that brought them to hospital but are not yet ready to return home. That is the direct cause of what we now see front-of-house in our A&E departments.

This is a problem which has been growing every year. There were 30,000 more delayed discharges last winter than the year before. The problem now appears even worse. Some hospitals even talk about using the law to evict patients.

The number of over-65s getting publicly-funded social care has fallen 30% since 2009. Despite what most accident and emergency staff might feel on a busy night shift, drunks and time wasters have not caused the crisis. The systematic destruction of the welfare state has.

Solutions are not going to be simple. Systemic problems require a systemic solution. More beds, more staff and better funding of our NHS will help lessen the burden, and might stop a crisis becoming a catastrophe.

A long term solution requires us to throw out the misguided and dangerous austerity drive, remove the damaging healthcare market that this government has created, and provide a proper funding system for hospitals, general practice and social services.

Protests at Hartlepool hospital closure

A&E crisis leads bosses to attack ambulance union agreements

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