Steve Harbord, Unison rep, London Ambulance Service (personal capacity)
Privatisation of the NHS is demoralising NHS staff as terms and conditions are attacked and staff are ground down by an ever increasing workload. My pay rise last year and for the last three years? 0%!
The NHS is all up for grabs. Private companies such as Harmoni bid for frontline medical care contracts. Private ambulance firms such as Medi Force move into emergency 999 cover.
Privatisation’s ‘mandate’ comes from big business. Britain’s fat cats are sitting on £850 billion, but refuse to invest it as they’re not guaranteed a profit.
They wait to be handed public services like the NHS to make a profit out of taxpayers’ money.
Labour’s shadow health minister Andy Burnham recently spoke on the increase of private ambulance firms covering emergency calls, saying we should not see such an increase “without proper debate”. So it’s OK to hand over billions of taxpayers’ money to the spivs but let’s chat about it first!
Labour in government took the privatisation baton and ran with it. None of the three main parties says that the NHS should stay a ‘not for profit’ public service.
The trade union movement should organise a united fightback, starting by withdrawing funds from the pro-privatising Labour Party.
Union funds should only be used to back individuals and parties that oppose privatising vital public services.
Socialists call for the nationalisation of public services under democratic workers’ control.