- Conference
- 2006 Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 23 December 2005
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Conference notes with grave concern the wave of cuts in NHS services over the last year, as a result of shortfalls in funding from Primary Care Trusts.
The government claims that it has put millions of pounds into additional funding for the NHS, yet we have seen ward closures, job losses and reductions in essential services on a scale not seen since the Labour government came to power. This appears to confirm the Union’s warnings that too much money has been going into the pockets of the private sector through PFI and other pro-privatisation schemes, and too little into direct patient care.
The funding crisis has prompted right-wing elements, including some with access to the government, to claim that the NHS ‘cannot cope’ and that what is needed is ‘reform’, i.e. putting even more health provision into the hands of the private health industry. This fits in neatly with the proposals contained in ‘Commissioning a Patient-Led NHS’, which suggests that front-line NHS organisations stop directly providing patient care, and instead ‘commission’ it from ‘a range of providers’, including Foundation Trusts and the private sector. If carried through to its logical conclusion this would mean the end of the NHS as we know it, and a serious move towards a two-tier, privatised health system along US lines.
Conference welcomes the large number of local protests against the cuts, and notes the widespread public support achieved by these activities, which show that there is a big enough movement to stop these attacks on the NHS. But that can only happen if there is concerted national action, by whatever means are necessary, to stop the cuts and defend the NHS.
Conference calls on the Service Group Executive to work with the wider union to take the lead in organising a national campaign, together with Keep Our NHS Public, and alongside a broad coaltion of major stakeholders, to make the government provide the necessary funding to reverse the cuts, and to abandon the sinister moves towards privatisation contained in ‘Commissioning a Patient-Led NHS’.