Fight for full funding and decent pay, not more privatisation
An NHS worker
Labour health minister Wes Streeting has announced a national investigation into maternity services. It will start with the ‘up to’ ten trusts currently found to be providing inadequate services and then widen across the UK. It is telling that he has made no commitment whatsoever for maternity services to receive whatever funding the inquiry reports is necessary; never mind to make our maternity services first class.
Let’s face it, have previous inquiries, like 2017-2022’s Ockenden review for example, made improvements? No. The Royal College of Midwives says maternity services have become worse since then and are past breaking point. There are some hospitals in the UK where there are no maternity services and women are forced to travel to the next area. Will the review report on what funding needs to be in place to allow the services to run safely?
Streeting has had a go at the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for not regulating sufficiently. This may be the case but, without the necessary funding, even if the CQC had called out the crumbling crisis-ridden service, how could it have been improved?
Streeting is also calling for a change in culture in the NHS – any culture of hiding deficiencies in service or covering up negative events can be laid firmly at the feet of the leaders in the NHS. Workers are regularly and repeatedly reporting unsafe staffing levels and patient safety events. These should be heeded and dealt with in all areas of the NHS, with workers themselves having oversight through our trade unions. The NHS is being constantly undermined by political parties of all colours whilst at the same time systematically drained of resources and staff. NHS staff’s wages have fallen in real terms by up to 30% since 2008.
With the Starmer-led Labour government intent on increased privatisation of the NHS, what could that mean for maternity services following an inquiry? With the prospect of even more cuts, privatisation and ‘rationalising’ services in the NHS, the issue of accountability is vital. Privatising health services will make them less accountable, and the drive for profit makes services less safe.
Save our NHS
Whatever the inquiry finds, our NHS urgently needs more staff and the resources to provide safe and good quality care. Student bursaries need to be reintroduced to encourage people into the NHS. There has to be decent pay in all NHS jobs and particularly in maternity services, with clear career progression and an acceptable working environment; all of which will mean significant and continued investment into resources for maternity units. Working groups made up of staff and patients – not bean counters or bosses – should agree the standards and the government should commit now to whatever funding is required to reach them and then continue the funding to maintain them.
Women’s health generally has been and continues to be under attack by successive governments by denying the NHS the funding it needs. In the scrabble for who gets what, it appears that women’s health regularly falls to the bottom of politicians’ and CEO’s priorities.
Any approach of providing health services on a shoestring should be firmly rejected – not only for maternity services but the whole of the NHS. NHS workers are fighting for their services and, in some sections, there have been strikes to demand sufficient funding for their services to run. Workers and patients should organise together to demand, and get, the NHS – across all services – we want and need. The money is there, it is either in the hands of the bosses or being spent on warfare. We demand public services that provide us with what’s needed.
Previous inquiry outcomes and the watering down of recommendations have shown that maternity care is deemed too expensive for capitalism. Inquiries under a capitalist system describe the water we are drowning in and kick the can down the road. That’s why Socialist Party members fight for the renationalisation of the whole of the NHS under democratic working-class control and management. We need to kick the capitalists out and build a socialist system based on need and not greed.
Big business and the NHS
Heather Rawling
A family member is receiving palliative treatment for lung cancer. Our local hospital, the Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI), is bursting at the seams. Car parking is a nightmare and the waiting rooms to see an oncology doctor are often full and at times standing room only. It’s obvious that the staff are working to full capacity if not beyond. Yet their care is wonderful.
To ease the pressure, he has been offered treatment at home. From a patient’s perspective, this is preferable to travelling into Leicester, queuing for car parking and waiting around to be seen. However, the treatment is delivered by a private company – Pharmaxo. The nurses who come to the house are NHS-trained and often have worked in Oncology at the LRI.
I was curious to find out more about Pharmaxo. Pharmaxo started life in 2009, around the time of the Great Recession. Today its turnover is £164.73 million. The Icon group, which acquired Pharmaxo in 2024, is 70% owned by private equity firm EQT.
At every level, profits will be siphoned off from the NHS, depleting its stretched resources. The motive of shareholders is profit not patient care. There is no reason why the NHS could not employ the nurses it trained to deliver cancer treatments in the home environment to suitable patients.
This is just one small example of how big business is getting its greedy tentacles into the NHS and profiting from our need for treatment.
- Kick out the privateers
- Nationalise the pharmaceutical companies
- Bring all outsourced services back into the NHS
