THE CRISIS in the NHS has become a big issue in next month’s local
council elections. Earlier this year managers at Lewisham Hospital in
south London announced plans to close three wards and sack hospital
staff.
Lewisham Hospital’s Trust faces a funding shortfall as Blair’s
government tries to bring ‘market methods’ into the NHS. At March’s
council meeting following the cuts announcement, Socialist Party
councillors Chris Flood and Ian Page put forward a motion calling for
extra government funds to stop the cuts.
Lewisham’s health services shouldn’t suffer from Blair’s market
madness. But all the other parties – New Labour, Tory, Lib Dem and even
the one Green councillor – voted against our motion!
Now however the establishment parties are feeling the heat, as anger
grows at the NHS funding crisis. Blair insists his ‘market reforms’ will
go ahead. But Lewisham council’s Health Committee has organised an
emergency ‘scrutiny’ meeting to discuss Lewisham Hospital. Their letter
convening the meeting admits that "the impending local government
elections" influenced their decision to act!
At the health committee meeting Chris and Ian will call on the
council to use its legal powers to challenge Lewisham Hospital’s cuts
plans.
That won’t guarantee that the cuts will be stopped – a big campaign
will be needed for that and Ian, Chris and fellow Socialist Party
candidate Jess Leech are organising a local public meeting before the 4
May election to discuss how to fight to save our NHS.
Worcester sauce from Labour!
MOST PEOPLE in Worcestershire have probably never heard of the
Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust. They will have no idea that
Michael O’Riordan is apparently Chairman of the Trust.
An Aslef member
But this Trust tells us we must dispense with 720 NHS staff across
hospitals in Worcester, Redditch and Kidderminster. It says they’re £30
million in debt and expects a further £30 million in deficit next year.
But this doesn’t unduly perturb New Labour Worcester MP Mike Foster.
24 hours after job losses were announced he told the local Worcester
News that "patient care will not be affected".
Four days later the Trust’s Chief Executive says they don’t know
which jobs will be lost, he will minimise the impact job losses will
have on patient services, but can’t say how this will be achieved!
Worcester Socialist Party members held a city centre stall, giving
out leaflets and starting a petition opposing the job losses. Several
NHS workers signed the petition. One told us she expected her job to be
one of the 720. Another said staff were already under enormous pressure.
Job losses would make work intolerable.
Using the precedent set by Socialist Party councillors in Stoke, we
contacted Kidderminster Health Concern campaign group who have members
on Worcestershire County Council, to see that this decision is called in
for scrutiny.
We hope to help mount a campaign to resist the job losses and move on
to plan a secure long-term future for NHS services.
Children’s hospitals
LABOUR HAS just brought in a new payment-by-results system
nat-ionwide. Hospitals are paid according to how many operations they
perform, with a new tariff for every type of operation.
But the country’s leading children’s hospitals say this system fails
to cover the cost of the complicated procedures they carry out on some
of the country’s sickest children.
The new system will leave the four best-known children’s hospitals
with a combined deficit of some £22 million, £11 million at Alder Hey,
£6 million at Great Ormond Street and about £2.5 million at both
Birmingham and Sheffield children’s hospitals.
New Labour are putting the health service under pressure to cut
much-needed services, just to comply with a rigid formula, designed to
increase competition between hospitals.
Royal Free
ON 11 March we held a protest outside Royal Free hospital in
Hampstead, north London, against the 480 proposed cuts to contract
staff’s jobs and closures of wards. These cuts will greatly reduce the
quality of service the hospital can give, whilst increasing pressure on
the permanent staff.
Alex Georgiou
Many people signed the petition and spoke to us about how angry they
are at the government’s neglect of the health service for the average
person. Many gave donations to the campaign and bought the socialist.
