Prentis calls for halt to NHS privatisation

UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis today criticised the Labour Party of “government by diktat” in its attempts to allow the private sector into the health service.

Prentis asked the Labour Party Conference: “An NHS driven not by patient need, but by profits and markets: Is that really our vision?

“I can think of nothing more important, nothing where the stakes are higher, not just for us but for future generations.”

The general secretary proposed a composite motion that would put the brakes on the government’s market-led reforms. The result of a card vote is expected tomorrow.

The motion called for an urgent review of the role of markets and competition in the health service, before any further expansion of the role of the private sector.

It noted that despite the fact that the NHS was now delivering a “vision of modernisation” and its staff were consistently meeting targets and reducing waiting lists, reforms since 2002 had centred on increasing the role of the private sector.

The issue came to a head in July, when the NHS chief executive wrote to the heads of the Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), setting out a programme for the opening of primary care to private providers – a move, said the motion, “towards fragmenting the NHS and embedding a marketised system of providing public services with a substantial and growing role for the private sector”.

Prentis reminded the conference that these PCTs had been introduced just three years ago, “to unleash the sprit of public sector enterprise to rival that of the private sector”. But having just “bedded down”, they were now being “booted out” by the government.

“Managers who should be leading – the real 'change makers' – are now fighting for their jobs,” he said. “Health visitors, community midwives, occupational therapists, district nurses – the backbone of our local community services – are threatened with transfer to the private sector.

“And where did we hear about such major changes? In the newspapers. There was no debate, no discussion, no analysis, and no mention of the PCTs in the manifesto. This is government by diktat – and it is simply not acceptable.”

He urged the government not to repeat the mistakes of the Tories. And he stressed: “This composite isn’t about going back. It isn’t about denying choice. It’s about a government not consulting on fundamental change, not talking, not treating people with respect.”

Health secretary Patricia Hewitt countered that the NHS had always made use of the independent sector – only much less efficiently than today. And to do so was the only way that the party would meet its manifesto promises to cut waiting times.

“What we have been doing has helped,” she said. “It has been a part of enormous improvements in the NHS in the past few years. But we have still got so much more to do.”

The motion calls on the government to:
consult with representatives of all levels of NHS management, the NHS unions and patient and professional bodies to clearly identify the practical shortcomings that are emerging with the ‘choice” and market policies in the NHS;
institute an urgent joint review into the mix of private sector provision in the NHS and the role, limits and regulation of markets in our public services;
suspend the introduction of competition of providers into primary care services, and the stipulation that the role of PCTs as service providers be minimised, pending the outcome of such a review;
suspend any further expansion of the role of the private sector into the NHS.

28/9/05