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 Ā£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
The letter:
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
