News in brief

NHS conversation: so far a bit of a laugh

As was reported in last week’s Socialist, available online, Labour health secretary Wes Streeting launched a ‘national conversation’ website for people to suggest NHS reforms.

As suggestions go live and can be viewed straight away, maybe the suggestions that there should be a pub on every ward to improve morale, or for princess Diana statues aren’t the most serious.

But some of the most popular ones on the website would help fix the crisis in the NHS. Abolishing tuition fees for nurses and paying them a living grant. Getting rid of car parking fees and stopping them going straight into the coffers of private companies. And paying staff proper wages to fix staff retention.

These would all go a way to dealing with the crisis in the NHS. But are Streeting, Starmer and Reeves going to listen? Or will they listen to the private health voices clamouring for more privatisation? Or the financial markets which are allowed to hold our country ransom by the Labour Party?

So far it’s been a very one-sided conversation!

Who makes the rules?

Rachel Reeves is changing the rules. The Labour government will now allow itself to borrow more money if it is used for capital investment.

So if councils were to invest in building council homes to meet need, using reserves, borrowing and any other powers at their disposal, what’s stopping them? If it breaks any of Reeves’s ‘rules’, she can change them!

If we are in the business of changing the rules, why not let the working class set them? Some suggestions: scrap all the anti-union laws now, make it against the rules to pay any worker less than £15 an hour, no-one should be able to suck profit out of our NHS.

The reality is, Reeves and the Labour government are setting the rules to try to best serve the capitalist bosses. Tear them up, let the working class decide!

Councils can pay pensioners winter fuel payment

One council has said that pensioners in its borough will receive a winter fuel payment after the government scrapped it nationally. Aspire-run Tower Hamlets council in east London will pay some pensioners a winter fuel payment to replace Winter Fuel Allowance. While, at £175, it is a lot less than the means-tested Winter Fuel Payment – worth £200 or £300 depending on when someone is born, and is not available to all – it shows it can be done.

Socialist Party members are fighting for the trade unions to demand that all councils replace Winter Fuel Allowance, and union leaders saying that it can’t be done should look at Tower Hamlets. Pressure in Tower Hamlets is also needed, with pensioners saying they have not been told yet how to get the payment, one saying: “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

The Socialist Party says:

  • Reverse the winter fuel payment cut
  • Decent pensions for all
  • Stop energy price hikes – nationalise the energy industry
  • We need a new mass workers’ party that will make the super-rich pay and fight for socialist change