Privatisation will wreck NHS, say campaigners

· Hospitals may close, says letter to Guardian
· Timing seems designed to foment conference revolt

John Carvel, social affairs editor
Guardian, Saturday September 24, 2005

A campaign to halt the government's drive to commercialise 
the NHS is being launched today by the former Labour health 
secretary Frank Dobson with the support of leading figures 
from the British medical establishment.

In a letter to the Guardian that is likely to form the focus 
of dissent at the Labour conference in Brighton next week, 
they say that reforms being introduced by the health 
secretary, Patricia Hewitt, threaten to destroy the 
character of the NHS by forcing hospitals and health 
professionals to compete with each other. The timing of the 
letter is clearly designed to foment a revolt in Brighton, 
where Dave Prentis, general secretary of the public service 
union Unison, intends to move a resolution on Wednesday 
calling on the government to "suspend any further expansion 
of the role of the private sector into the NHS". The union 
was busy mobilising support yesterday among unions, MPs and 
constituency parties, predicting that victory for its motion 
could become the main flashpoint of the conference.

But the campaign's reach extended beyond the Labour 
movement, with supporters of the letter including 19 
professors of medicine and related disciplines, senior 
figures from the British Medical Association, and the poet 
laureate, Andrew Motion. It was also signed by Mr Prentis, 
the former cabinet minister Clare Short, and authors Philip 
Pullman, Claire Tomalin and Nick Hornby.

The letter came as the BMA published a survey of NHS medical 
directors across England suggesting that a third of NHS 
trusts are preparing to reduce services to avoid a debt 
crisis. The letter said: "Forced market competition will 
break up the NHS as a collaborating network ... There will 
be winners and losers, with some units and even entire 
hospitals having to close ... The NHS must be kept in public 
hands ... We call on organisations, healthcare workers, 
patients and public to campaign to protect the NHS from 
further privatisation and fragmentation."

Mr Dobson said: "The government's policy of promoting 
competition within the NHS and franchising services out to 
the private sector is gathering momentum day by day. Before 
long we will have a health insurance system and the NHS's 
role as a provider of care will be limited to picking up the 
difficult cases and looking after the worst off. There is 
great concern in the Labour party throughout the country 
about what is happening - and it is shared by more than 1m 
NHS employees. It is time we worked together to put some 
chocks under the wheels of this fashionable bandwagon."

The BMA's analysis of NHS cuts was based on a survey of 530 
medical directors in England. On the basis of 120 replies, 
it said 73% of trusts face a funding shortfall in the 
current year. The required savings averaged £6.2m per trust. 
Almost half were proposing a recruitment freeze and 27% were 
considering redundancies. Some trusts are also intending to 
close beds.

The BMA said medical staff would be included in recruitment 
freezes in almost half (47.9%) of cases where this was being 
considered, with 14% saying redundancies would also include 
medical staff.

Paul Miller, chairman of the BMA's consultants' committee, 
said: "It is hard to understand why, at a time when the 
government has invested unprecedented funding in the health 
service, trusts may have to lay off staff and close wards. 
Something is going terribly wrong when patients pay the 
price for these financial problems and the government's lack 
of joined-up thinking ... It is madness to guarantee private 
providers huge volumes of work, often at a higher cost than 
the NHS, while NHS hospitals are deprived of essential funding."

The NHS Confederation, representing managers and trusts, 
said the BMA's findings should be treated with caution, 
since less than a quarter of medical directors replied to 
the survey.

The campaign's website is www.KeepOurNHSPublic.com

· Read the letter here.

The future of the NHS is at stake

Saturday September 24, 2005

Guardian
The NHS stands at a crossroads. For nearly 60 years, Britain 
has enjoyed a National Health Service that strives to be 
comprehensive, accessible and high value for money. Now, 
government reforms threaten both the ethos of the NHS, and 
the planned and equitable way in which it delivers care to 
patients.

At the heart of the changes is the creation of a market that 
welcomes profit-driven international corpor-ations and will 
compel hospitals and health professionals to compete with 
each other. If these reforms continue the nature of the 
health system will change radically:

- Income and profit will come before clinical considerations.
- Profitable services and patients will attract money at the 
expense of unprofitable ones.
- Forced market competition will break up the NHS as a 
collaborating network of shared resources and information.
- Even more of the new money allocated to health will be 
diverted to shareholders and wasted on the huge 
administrative costs associated with a market.

There will be winners and losers, with some units and even 
entire hospitals having to close. We are already seeing bed 
closures in NHS hospitals. The end result will undermine the 
choice that is most important to patients - access to 
comprehensive, trustworthy and l ocal health services.

The situation is grave. The NHS must be kept in public 
hands, serving the interests of all patients and the broader 
public. We therefore call on organisations, healthcare 
workers, patients and public to campaign to protect the NHS 
from further privatisation and fragmentation.

Prof David Hunter
University of Durham

Dr Mac Armstrong
Ex-Chief Medical Officer, Scotland

Sir Sandy Macara
ex-BMA council chair

Dr John Marks
ex BMA council chair

Professor Brian Jarman
Ex BMA president and head of the Dr Foster unit at Imperial 
College

Sir Iain Chalmers
Director, UK Cochrane Centre NHS Research and Development 
Programme

Professor Julian Tudor Hart
Medic, academic and writer

Frank Dobson MP
Ex Secretary of state for Health

Professor John Yudkin
Professor of Medicine Director, International Health and 
Medical Education Centre University College London

Professor Martin White
Chair of Public Health and Director Public Health Research 
Group School of Population & Health Sciences Faculty of 
Medical Sciences University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Professor George Davey Smith
(Professor of Epidemiology) Dept Social Medicine, Bristol

Professor Martin McKee
European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition London 
School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Professor Allyson Pollock
Academic and writer

Peter Kilfoyle MP

Professor Colin Crouch
Chair of the Institute of Governance and Public Management 
Warwick University Business School

Professor Martin White
Chair of Public Health and Director, University of Newcastle 
upon Tyne

Professor Sara Arber
Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford

Dave Prentis
Unison, General Secretary

Prof Vincent Marks
Professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Surrey

Professor Dame June Clark
Professor Emeritus at the University of Wales member of the 
Royal Commission into long term care of the elderly

Claire Rayner
writer, broadcaster

Phillip Pullman
author

Neal Lawson
Chair, Compass

George Monbiot
Writer, journalist

Clare Short MP

Professor Sir Andy Haines
Professor of Public Health and Primary Care

Mr Nick Astbury (personal capicity)
President of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists

Nick Hornby
author

John Bird
comedian

Andrew Motion
Poet Laureate

Prof Charles Webster
NHS historian academic, writer

Francis Wheen
Journalist

Claire Tomalin
winner of Whitbread book award

Prof Harry Keen CBE
President NHS Support Federation National Pensioners Convention

Frank Cooper

Professor Rodney Reznek
Professor of Diagnostic Imaging

Prof Emeritus Ron Taylor

Prof Emeritus David Metcalfe