Demonstration against NHS cuts at Whipps Cross hospital, East London 21 September 2013, photo Paul Mattsson

Demonstration against NHS cuts at Whipps Cross hospital, East London 21 September 2013, photo Paul Mattsson   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Simon Stevens was an adviser to former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair on beginning the privatisation process in the NHS.

He is now an executive for a private healthcare company in the US. He was recently appointed as the new chief executive of the NHS.

Stevens has very generously agreed to take a £20,000 pay cut – meaning he’ll ‘only’ be earning £189,000 a year.

Meanwhile, health workers have been told that they won’t receive the measly 1% pay rise they had been promised and services are under threat of cuts and privatisation across the country.

The bosses and politicians try to justify these attacks as being because of ‘failing’ hospitals – but they don’t mention that the biggest failures happen after privatisation.

There hasn’t even been an inquiry at the BMI Mount Alvernia hospital in Guildford, despite the Care Quality Commission finding that “medical, surgical and some nursing practices were so poor that people were put at significant risk. This risk was, on some occasions, life threatening.”

We need a national campaign including a strike of all health workers to defend our NHS. Many important local campaigns are developing which could pave the way to this if the correct lead is given by the health unions.