ELN: Ousted Labour councillor Michael Keith was snapped out and about in Tower Hamlets on Saturday, 3rd March – fuelling speculation that he was taking a weekend away from his personal chair at Oxford University to seek selection as Labour’s candidate for the anticipated by-election in Spitalfields and Banglatown. Fears of a fourth election defeat in a row for Keith were dashed when Labour selected Ala Uddin as their prospective candidate – and it turned out Keith had come back to support Labour’s Day of Action on the NHS.
Keith joined (left to right) Labour Group Leader Cllr Josh Peck, MPs Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green & Bow) and Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar & Limehouse) and Cllr Rachael Saunders (Mile End East) on the extreme right (of the photo).
Cllr Rachael Saunders, Labour Group Spokesperson for Health had promised that “the people of Tower Hamlets will come together in a mass day of action”. After the day, she reported that over 100 activists were out on the day and collected over 800 signatures: that’s eight signatures each (or seven, if each activist signed up before campaigning with the masses).
What they said
Cllr Rachael Saunders, Tower Hamlets Labour Lead for Health: “The people of Tower Hamlets oppose this botched top down reorganisation of the NHS. This is a mass campaign, and we’ll continue to fight to oppose Tory changes that will damage our NHS.”
Cllr Joshua Peck, Leader of Tower Hamlets Labour Group: “People queued in the rain to sign our petition to against these changes on Saturday and many told us their stories of the fantastic service they have received from the NHS. This bill threatens the NHS as we know it and we will continue to campaign with residents against it.”
Jim Fitzpatrick MP: “I’m proud of Labour’s record of investment in the NHS. Our doctors, nurses and hospital staff need to focus on protecting our services from Tory cuts, not have to deal with the waste and bureaucracy this Tory Bill will create.”
Rushanara Ali MP: “GPs in Tower Hamlets were the first in the country to ask David Cameron to drop this damaging NHS bill. When even the GPs in his own clinical commissioning groups are concerned about the chaos, confusion and damage these changes will cause to the NHS and the risks they pose to patient care, the Government needs to think again and listen to people’s concerns including here in the east end and drop this Bill.”
What they didn’t say
In the course of 18 years in office, the New Labour Government pumped money into the NHS and did see a reduction in waiting lists and some real improvements in service. However, much of New Labour’s health reforms paved the way for the current Con-Dem Coalition’s onslaught on the NHS which Labour now opposes.
•Labour relied on Private Finance Initiative (PFI) funding to build hospitals, such as the Royal London. In many cases, this led to a reduction in hospital beds and the new hospitals are now saddled with paying back extortionate fees to the private companies which were in on the deals – threatening more ward closures as the hospitals struggle to find the money for the private finance companies.
•New Labour had promised to do away with the Thatcher Government’s market system, which was a tremendous waste of resources. Instead, both Blair and Brown not only kept the system but made it more cumbersome and costly (with soaring admin costs) – and sped up the Tory process of paying out NHS money to the private sector to carry out NHS functions with their “World Class Commissioning” initiative.
•The unelected minister Lord Darzi was a champion of getting NHS money into private hands. He wanted to set up a “Co-operation and Competition Panel” to make sure the NHS internal market was “competitive”. Under New Labour, NHS Chief Exec Nigel Crisp attempted to turn Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) into commissioning bodies which would hand over services to private or arms-length companies rather than provide them themselves. His next step was to be to ensure the whole NHS stopped being a provider of services and become just a commissioner of service from various – mostly private, profit-making – providers. Public anger forced New Labour into a dramatic U-turn on the Crisp proposals (and boot Crisp off to the House of Lords).
•By September 2009, there were 17,000 fewer acute hospital beds than when Margaret Thatcher was in office – leaving the NHS wondering how it would manage to deal with seasonal illnesses that winter.
What we say
Labour could have spent the taxpayers’ money it put into the NHS much more wisely. If Labour had stopped the process of using the NHS to channel more public money into the private sector, the current Con-Dem Coalition proposals would have been a departure from the norm and easier to campaign against. An opposition is there to oppose, and we can only be thankful that at last, nearly two years since the General Election, Labour is making its opposition to the Con-Dem proposals clear to us all. But alongside their new commitment to opposing privatisation of the NHS, we are waiting for Labour to make some new policy commitments to keep the NHS truly public and give it the investment it needs and we deserve.