Stop the threats to the NHS


Manchester

JOBS AND services across Greater Manchester NHS trusts are under
serious threat. Pennine Acute Trust plans to slash 800 jobs to try to
tackle a £21 million deficit. That trust runs four hospitals – North
Manchester General, Royal Oldham, Rochdale Infirmary and Fairfield
General in Bury.

But they’re not the only threatened cuts. Frustrated by mass
opposition to their attacks on Salford and Trafford maternity and
neonatal facilities (respectively), management are now planning to
run-down neonatal care at Wythenshawe Hospital.

Neonatal care is for prematurely-born infants. Loss of the vital
services there would mean tiny babies flown miles across Manchester and
even to Oldham!

During the local elections we talked to many people whose children had
been in the neonatal intensive care unit. Staff from the unit told us
they opposed it shutting. These facilities are there because they’re
necessary – they’re not just some corner that axe-wielding management can
cut.

Under the cuts plans, there will be more maternity services, but with
less facilities and far fewer specialised staff for premature babies! How
does this make sense?

NHS bosses backed off from cutting neonatal services in Trafford in
the face of our campaign stalls, petitions, leaflets and actions two
years ago. At Hope Hospital in Salford, threats to attack maternity
services have gone quiet after massive local opposition became clear. Now
they’re attacking Wythenshawe.

This is part of an overall cuts plan by NHS bosses that in turn comes
from the national funding and staffing crisis created by New Labour and
the Tories before them. Our campaigns, and others, show that only mass
protests and action will force the axe-men to back off.

We’ll be battling to retain full neonatal services at Wythenshawe –
and not at the expense of elsewhere! We fully support staff in Pennine
Acute Trust taking action to defend their jobs.

The battles to defend jobs and services can’t be separated and we hope
to forge strong links between campaigns across Greater Manchester as part
of the urgently needed national campaign to rebuild the NHS.

By Manchester Socialist Party members

What the socialist says:

  • No to NHS job losses, cuts and closures.
  • No to health privatisation and ‘the market’. Rebuild the NHS as a
    publicly funded service free at the point of use, and with immediate cash
    to end the crisis of under-funding.
  • Abandon the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). No more profiteering by
    building companies and banks. All new hospitals to be built with public
    funding, not for private profit.
  • Nationalise the pharmaceutical industry, the pharmacy chains and
    medical supply industry and integrate them into a democratically
    controlled NHS.
  • Unite the many campaigns already in existence to defend the NHS.
    Support the call by health workers in the public sector union UNISON for
    national demonstrations and industrial action against the attacks on jobs
    and services.

Whipps Cross meeting

OVER 20 people including eight workers from Whipps Cross hospital came
to the Socialist Party election public meeting on the NHS in Waltham
Forest, northeast London.

One health worker explained that the Trust has given £250,000 to
consultants Ernst&Young to advise them on "how to save money". £250,000
would pay the wages of ten full-time nurses!

The "guesstimate" is that the Trust will be looking to get rid of 350
full-time posts because of its deficit. There have been no agency staff
since at least the beginning of the year. One auxiliary nurse explained
how she was the only support worker on an acute elderly ward with 24
beds.

Just one nurse is now expected to deal with non able-bodied patients
instead of two. Staff ill-health is increasing but there are no agency
staff to replace them, drastically increasing the pressure and workload
on remaining staff.

"Where has all the money gone?," asked another nurse. "Not at ward
level but into executive pockets. Morale is non-existent. Management have
lost touch with the people on the ground – they are the people who should
be in charge."

The meeting agreed to launch a campaign against the cuts at Whipps
Cross hospital and the attacks on the NHS nationally. Health workers and
members of the community at the meeting were keen to link up with similar
campaigns around the country.

They will be putting pressure on public sector union UNISON to name
the day for a national demonstration to show New Labour the enormous
anger that exists on this issue.

PFI bloodsucking in Norwich

PARLIAMENT’S ‘WATCHDOG’ on public spending, the public accounts
committee, has criticised the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and its
bloodsucking role in the NHS.

The committee says some of Britain’s biggest business names took
millions out of a big hospital project, leaving it facing debts that
could reach as high as £14.8 million by the end of this year.

In Norfolk and Norwich hospital, one of the Blair government’s PFI
forerunners, the rule of private capital is forcing the hospital to
threaten to cut hundreds of jobs to try to balance its books after a
contract to amalgamate two old hospitals on a new site.

The project took 16 years and was completed in 2001. Two years later,
Barclays, Serco, Innisfree and John Laing decided to refinance their
joint working company, Octagon, to take early profits.

By increasing the borrowings from £200 million to more than £300
million and putting off the repayment date from the year 2017 to 2037,
they took away a £115 million windfall of which only £34 million got back
to the hospital trust.

The committee chair, Edward Leigh, called this example of privatisers’
greed and theft, "the unacceptable face of capitalism."

That’s putting it mildly. The refinancing lined fat cats’ pockets,
putting their rate of return up from an already generous 16% to a truly
greedy 60%. The trust may now have to pay up to £257 million if it wants
to terminate the contract early.

PFI deals in the NHS aren’t all as extreme as that but all of them
have been very profitable for the bosses and very expensive for the NHS.

We say abolish the PFI and other privatisation schemes. We need public
services fully funded by taxation that could provide good-quality care to
patients rather than massive profits for capitalist investors.