- Conference
- 2012 National Delegate Conference
- Date
- 1 January 2012
- Decision
- Carried
Conference reaffirms its complete opposition to the government’s Health and Social Care Bill and other plans associated with the Liberating the NHS white paper. Conference believes that these represent the biggest threat to the integrity and values of the English NHS in its history.
Conference asserts that the government’s moves towards a wholesale healthcare market will lead to privatisation, fragmentation, instability and inequity. In particular Conference notes that:
1) NHS patients will increasingly find themselves waiting longer for treatment as hospitals prioritise greater numbers of private patients;
2) competition law will increasingly be applied to the NHS and enforced by a utilities-style regulator;
3) healthcare companies will be able to take on much greater roles in both the provision and coordination of care;
4) there was no proper parliamentary scrutiny of the Bill;
5) Andrew Lansley as Health Secretary repeatedly defied instructions from the Information Commissioner;
6) every one of the arguments used by ministers to justify the Bill was a deception; and
7) the public were told that GPs and health professionals would be put in charge but in fact they will have no say.
Furthermore, Conference notes that the Bill does not address any of the real problems of the NHS:
a) the chronic lack of resources for mental health services;
b) the shambolic state of long-term care of the elderly;
c) the huge and rising costs for another 20 or more years of the Private Finance Initiative;
d) or the erosion of the NHS by the drawing up lists of so-called “low priority” treatments and operations which are no longer available free at point of use, and for which patients in many areas now face a choice of going private – or going without.
Conference notes the increasing threat posed by the move to using the Any Qualified Provider policy. Conference believes this will lead to a greater role for private companies in delivering health services and threatens the jobs and terms and conditions of UNISON members, as a more unstable market environment is created.
Conference recognises and applauds the alternative approaches to a market-based health service that have been taken within the devolved nations, but notes that threats to patient care and UNSION members exist outside England as well. For example, Conference rejects the myth that the NHS is being somehow protected from the wider austerity agenda. Cuts to services are happening now and are set to increase in the future, with tens of thousands of job losses expected across the UK NHS.
Conference also notes that within the devolved nations there are progressive models which could be adopted but that there is also the potential that some within the devolved nations will look to emulate some of the damaging English plans, in the way that ideas such as PFI, Payment by Results and Independent Sector Treatment Centres have been exported in the past.
Conference notes the successes of UNISON’s Our NHS Our Future campaign in bringing the dangers of government plans to a much wider audience and in galvanising opposition to them.
Conference further notes that older people are heavily reliant upon services provided by the NHS and that retired members want to get more involved in the Our NHS Our Future campaign.
Conference particularly welcomes the union’s success in protecting the NHS Blood and Transplant service from privatisation, with the government eventually heeding UNISON’s warnings that breaking up an integrated blood service would lead to disaster and the scandal of companies profiting from blood given freely by the public.
Conference believes that UNISON can play a crucial role in mounting local challenges against privatisation and cuts, as well as monitoring the impact of the expanding role of the private sector on NHS patients and staff. Conference recognises the importance in this of working with the TUC, other unions and NHS campaigners to broaden the base of our support.
Whilst continuing to oppose the creation of the new system for the NHS, Conference recognises the need for union members and health campaigners to use every available opportunity within the NHS to influence the local implementation of government plans.
Conference therefore calls on the National Executive Council to support, coordinate and promote efforts to resist the worst effects of the Bill and to make sure the Tories and LibDems pay the full political price for their onslaught on the NHS.
Conference also calls on the National Executive Council to:
a) continue and intensify the Our NHS Our Future campaign against privatisation and cuts that threaten the future of the NHS;
b) oppose the government’s move to using Any Qualified Provider to deliver services;
c) resist the exporting of damaging plans for the English NHS to the devolved nations;
d) monitor and challenge the local implementation of government plans, publicising regular updates exposing the erosion of the NHS and exclusion of treatments and operations such as hip and knee replacements;
e) monitor and publicise every instance of services and “commissioning support” services being privatised, and track the consequences for patient care;
f) step up the resistance to the establishment of “social enterprises” in place of public provision of community and other services, recognising, that (as the Central Surrey example shows), social enterprise is just a stepping stone to privatisation;
g) to work with local campaigners and community organisations to challenge cash-driven hospital closures, “centralisation” and rationalisation of services;
h) to strengthen UNISON organisation at every level to increase the union’s ability to resist attacks on the NHS;
i) to press for action to stem the haemorrhage of public money through PFI;
j) to work across service groups to expose the crisis in care of the elderly, and the dysfunctional system that is worsened by the Bill.
k) encourage members to use new and existing structures to mitigate the most damaging effects of government plans.
l) to call and build for a mass demonstration, on the scale of the enormous anti-cuts demonstration on 26 March 2011, as a step to building a campaign involving health workers, their unions, service users and the public to public to force the coalition to back down.”