Analysis

Today the Tories are taking ‘the last step in the privatisation of the NHS’

The hidden dangers of the NHS white paper

The Stop the NHS White Paper campaign has issued a warning to the UK people that a major step in the Tories’ privatisation of the NHS to parliament is being presented to Parliament today as part of the ‘Queen’s Speech’ indicating the government’s intentions for this parliamentary session. The group, made up of pro-NHS campaigners including members of the Socialist Health Association, says that the Government’s white paper ‘Integration and innovation: working together to improve health and social care for all’ will:

  1. remove the right for the sick to see a doctor – in many cases requiring patients to contact ‘call centres staffed by school leavers’
  2. remove the scrutiny requirement for local healthcare contracts to be available for public inspection
  3. merge health planning into mega bureaucratic institutions so local people can no longer get local MP’s to fight to keep local services or local hospitals open.
  4. allow private health corporations to sit on commissioning bodies – ‘poachers will become recruitment officers for gamekeepers’
  5. change the NHS into US style healthcarereducing care for patients while increasing costs, creating the perverse incentives seen in US healthcare whereby health providers receive bonuses for cutting the care provided to those who need it, as detailed in Michael Moore’s film Sicko

The group points out that the US spends 2.6 times more per capita on healthcare but provides the worst healthcare out of 11 countries.

Even many NHS workers appear to be unaware of the threat creeping up stealthily on the UK’s greatest achievement and treasure, such is the jargon and disinformation that hides its real nature and significance – but English people (the NHS in other UK nations is a devolved issue) face losing out so that a small group of corporations and individuals can become even wealthier.

The plan is disguised in jargon that hides the real meaning and significance of what the Tories are doing – and dressed up as a response to the pandemic when in fact it is part of a Tory plan that has been in execution for more than a decade, to fragment and parcel off the health service to the Tories’ ‘mates and backers’.

The group has started a parliamentary petition against the plans, but all too typically Labour’s leadership and health spokesman have failed to inform people about the real nature of the Tory’s ‘integrated care organisation’ plans, let alone properly oppose them. In fact, Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth seems to be ‘intensely relaxed’ about them and even supportive.

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25 comments

  1. Thank heavens that the SHA is alert enough to see this for what it is.

    And let’s all remember that ‘the last sep in the privatation of the NHS’ wouldn’t be possible or happening if Tony Blair and his atrocious newlabour had not ‘marketised’ NHS operations and introduced completely inappropriate performance targets, league tables, procurement practices, Trust Hospitals, etc., etc. which ration clinical deliverables and facilitate the lie that competition improves performance.

    It doesn’t, it merely provides yet another place where the accumulators of capital can flourish.

    1. Without denigrating the SHA’s response to this, or of any future efforts they might make to counteract it, I nevertheless have the same issue with them as with the Labour Party.

      Having enthusiastically joined the SHA in December last year, I then received an email in March informing me that they had adopted the IHRA definition of AS in full, and were also seeking assistance from the JLM for mandatory antisemitism training for all its office holders.

      I really couldn’t understand why they had felt the need to take such a step, particularly in view of how this had been at the root of the AS scam in the Labour Party. This then led me to question the authenticity of their claim to actually be a socialist organisation.

      Furthermore, as I had already resigned from the Labour Party due to the BoD/JLM involvement in its internal affairs — neither of which can be called socialist organisations, quite the opposite in fact — I felt unable as a matter of principle to continue as a member of the SHA and, informing them of such, promptly resigned.

      Hopefully, this won’t prove to be a malign influence on the Association but only time will tell.

      1. Left wingers won ALL the seats on the SHA at the recent AGM. That’s 15, including the Chair, Secretary and Treasurer. So it’s now “under new management” and determined to fight privatisation.

      2. So you have no issue with the alterations by Bojo & co to the NHS but you are upset about the adoption of a particular anti semitism approach that you don’t agree with by the SHA. Do you think your priorities might be misplaced?

      3. 🔔 O Yay ❕O Yay❕
        Sir Max Headroom, aka Keith, Keif, Temporary Embarrassment, Permanent Embarrassment, Perpetually Desperate Tool of the Establishment, Tory in poor disguise, Abuser of the Office of Opposition – SIR Foreskin, SIR Rat in the Headlights, SIR Potato Head … in short – SIR Over Jelled Mollusc ( apologies to molluscs ), SIR Tory Tool – Parasitic Barnacle SIR Starmer is now despised by the electorate. He is POLLING LOWER than Jeremy EVER did‼️‼️‼️ Ask SH it is clear he loooooves polls. Spin on it SH! It is yours on which to spin and spit.

        Way to go clever “strategist” Mandelson. Way to go W.M.D. Anthony Bliar, Hodge, Straw, Blunket you myth making “winners”, perpetuators of lies, overseers of destruction for the benefit of the one persent‼️‼️‼️

        Way to go Keith 🎉🎉🎉

      4. So you have no issue with the alterations by Bojo & co to the NHS

        Do you have trouble with comprehension? Try reading the first sentence again:

        Without denigrating the SHA’s response to this, or of any future efforts they might make to counteract it…

        While I have no reason to answer to the likes of you, nevertheless, just for your information not only have I signed the Parliamentary petition linked above but also another one put up by We Own It together with a donation towards their cause.

        Is that ok with you? Is that sufficient condemnation?

        Perhaps rather than trying to put words into my mouth do something useful yourself instead.

      5. Left wingers won ALL the seats on the SHA at the recent AGM.

        Maybe so, Wanda but that doesn’t alter the fact they have adopted the IHRA in full and brought the JLM on board. The IHRA is a flawed document, while the JLM could hardly be called socialist. Why not include JVL in the process?

        While you may be ok with that arrangement, which is of course your prerogative, I am not in just the same way as I rejected it with the Labour Party when the leadership candidates all acquiesced to the demands of the BoD.

    2. The master plan is moving along quicker than they had hoped thanks to this masking debacle. Due to inaction by GP’s surgeries and delayed treatments I now know people who actually despise the NHS. Unthinkable,once. Now such opinions are not even eccentric.

  2. Important article,Skwawkbox. Not surprising that that creature , Ashworth, or the rest of Starmer’s cronies, aren’t concerned at this vital next stage in privatising our NHS . Because since Blair the Labour Party leadership, and most Labour MPs have been completely complicit in the 30 year Tory/Labour carefully planned conspiracy to break up, defund, and eventually privatise our free at the point of need, NHS. Ashworth himself is a essentially creature of the private Health industry via donations to his funding and his chosen office advisor/SPADSs, and I cannot understand why Corbyn kept the little rat on as Shadow Health Secretary.

    We will quite possibly see the final endgame of the destruction of our free NHS during the next ten years , probably under a Tory government, but still with support (via indifference) from Labour. We will then have moved to a US style insurance-based health system – massively costly, privately delivere, grossly inefficient, and premised, as Skwawkbox correctly states, on AVOIDING providing care as much as possible – to reduce costs , and leave the artificial ‘surpluses produced to be distributed to private shareholders.

    This 30 year Tory/Labour (and actually the Lib Dems too) conspiracy to privatise the best feature of UK society, by multi-stage stealth, is a crime deserving the perpetrators being ‘put up against the wall’ for the damage it will do to us all. But they’ll all get comfy seats on Health Business Boards (like that Blairite snake, Milburn) and/’or Seats in the Lords instead ! In my own lifetime the NHS as a free , universal, service will have been born and died ! Beyond tragedy. Yet the mass of the general public are sleepwalking into this dire situation – fed constant lying bollocks by most politicians and most MSM.

  3. If New New Labour had any sense they’d promise to reverse the privatisation of the NHS, they’d be back in the game immediately.

    1. Starmer’s bosses don’t WANT Labour to be “back in the game”- they want to either destroy it and force the remnants to merge with the LibDems to form the Progress Party, or to keep it intact in name, but permanently reduce it’s electoral support to the 20%-25% range, so that all it can do is to be permanent-and powerless- junior partner to the Tories in a German-style “centre-right” coalition. They want to turn Labour into SPD-UK.

  4. There was simply one way to stop The Privatisation of the NHS, and that was to VOTE UK Labour Party in GE2019. The NHS is only one of hundreds more Corruption Deals that WILL push THE PEOPLE into abject Poverty!

    We had a CHOICE GE2019:
    The UK Labour Party = For THE PEOPLE = Democratic Socialism
    VS
    The Conservative Party Tories = Themselves and The Elites/Establishment/Machine = Thatcherite Neoliberalism leaning deep into Neoconservativism!

    NOW for GE2024 we have NO CHOICE!
    The Neolabour Party Tories = Themselves and The Elites/Establishment/Machine = Thatcherite Neoliberalism leaning deep into Neoconservativism!
    VS
    The Conservative Party Tories = Themselves and The Elites/Establishment/Machine = Thatcherite Neoliberalism leaning deep into Neoconservativism!

    The Elites/Establishment/Machine wins and wins again whichever Party you choose, both are Equally Corrupt, Dangerous and Ruthless and Run by The Elites/Establishment/Machine FOR The Elites/Establishment/Machine

  5. Opposition parties aren’t giving this the attention it deserves. People I speak to know something’s up and are very open to debate and even direct action. Just before the pandemic my surgery closed and moved to a new much larger premises as part of a much enlarged CCG run by a corporate provider. We were assigned new doctors who we never see. At first glance the whole set-up appears to have moved into the 21st Century, catering for population growth but just today the local paper talked of “a catastrophe” in cancer care with the longest waiting lists on record and my local hospital has just closed its A&E department and baby unit. You can’t gain entry to my new surgery without an appointment and that’s not going to change moving forward. I haven’t seen a dentist in more than 2 years now. Like I said, we know something is seriously wrong but politicians, by and large, aren’t doing anything like enough to save the NHS.

    1. I would be very surprised if Politicians are not the Orchestrators of those goings on. Looking just at the 3 Stooges USA, UK and Israel, NO Opposition Party, too many under the table dealings to even get head or tail of it and a blatantly obvious Military Union.
      Russia, China, Iran, etc, are they playing their own game?
      Are they playing their Part in the Same Game!?
      The PEOPLE are alone! We are as good as Modern Peasants!
      We’ve become so conditioned to believe that our Governments are there to protect us, The UN/ICC are there to protect us if our Governments go Rogue, but what have we seen The Governments just tell them to get lost, there are no consequences above a certain “Level”.

      1. What have Russia ,China and Iran got to do with scum in the UK and USA conspiring to steal what is left of the NHS skellyknelly. I’m afraid you got lost with that post.

      2. I am a lost “soul” John, I doubt very much that I will ever find it, whatever it is. 🙂 🙂 🙂
        About “Russia, China, Iran, etc, are they playing their own game?
        Are they playing their Part in the Same Game!?”
        What I was trying to say is………are we being fooled by all the various conflicts both domestically and internationally, and that all the decisions we are arguing/debating/talking about was already made years ago and on a global scale and no matter what we cant do a thing about it. Not The NHS, NO full-scale War with China etc. We are merely Pawns/funny shaped things in RISK, Our being alive is a Roll of a Dice by someone playing a game of greed and destruction somewhere.
        We are very much alone, no Protecting from Governments/Commissions/Organisations/etc.
        Now that is as clear as a muddy puddle, wah hah hah, nah fuck it! If it is still not clear forget about it and listen to ‘Wish you were here’ or something do sensible 🙂

        “We’re just two lost souls
        Swimming in a fish bowl,
        Year after year,
        Running over the same old ground.
        What have we found?
        The same old fears.”

      3. I would point out that the UN/ICC are not there to protect us. By their deeds shall ye know them. The UN appears to be there to be there for little more than window dressing. The ICC appears to be there to salve the consciences of the major powers by prosecuting people from small nations who have behaved appallingly whilst leaving those from more powerful nations untouched. Watch this space re: Gaza and the West Bank.

      4. Exactly, a little bit like the European Court of Human Rights more front than action, of course they have to up keep the Brightly lit Neon and Flashing LED Signage with a won case/something to celebrate in MSM (A bit like The Neolabour Tory Party and the “Labour” Brand, they’ve gotta keep that thing flashing and the neon shining!) to keep the People Worshipping and Hope-Filled!
        GE2019 HOPE died!
        The Neolabour Tory Party Killed it!
        If The Peasants are to survive we need to Decentralise and Open Source a new Capital Free “Economy”/World. We need to completely bypass the Capitalist Greed and Warmongering, by making their, or any other, Capital worthless.

        “And the people bowed and prayed
        To the neon god they made
        And the sign flashed out its warning
        In the words that it was forming
        And the sign said, “*We are The Neolabour Party, Neoliberal going on Neoconservative, but not Tory, we are “Centrist” Neoliberal going on Neoconservative, you see.
        “Similar” to Tories, but we are “Centrists” just look at our Wiki Pages and you will see we are “Left, Left Leaning, Centre Left” and “Socialist”!
        “Even” The MSM calls us Lefties, that is so convenient wouldn’t you say!”
        OBEY THE BRAND!!!*””

    2. Horrific lundiel. I read anOff-Guardian article
      yesterday, which, if I’d read it a year ago, I would have dismissed as alarmist nonesense. Have a quick read (4 or 5 mins) and see how many of the 10 points are pertinent to your experience (I reckon it’s easily 6 maybe 7). Your horrific experiences are happening all over the world.

  6. If this information had been printed on Labour leaflets during local elections……………..?

    1. Jeremy Corbyn exposed what’s happening on live TV during a hustings. My CLP and others have been campaigning against this since 2010, but if the papers won’t tell them what’s happening people don’t believe it.

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