Today we heard the news that the British Medical Association (BMA) has come out against the Tory party’s proposed reforms to the NHS. This weekend at their conference the Lib Dems voted against the government’s planned reforms. The Tory MP, and former GP, Sarah Wollaston stated that these reforms were a bad idea. So who exactly supports these changes? Not Unison, who believes these reforms to be unlawful. Nor the 11,000 NHS workers whose jobs will be at risk if these reforms go ahead. The question we must ask is why the government are still planning to go ahead with them.
Cameron argues that he is taking power away from ‘the managers’ and devolve it, and an £80bn budget, to GPs, or the term they prefer to use, ‘YOUR family doctor’. However, in reality GPs do not have time for to deal with the paperwork alongside their day to day duties. The GPs will hire managers from the private sector who will stand to make a huge profit out of these reforms. The privatisation of the NHS is already starting to seep in, despite the fact the Tories promised that there would be ‘no top down reorganisation of the NHS’.
We must as a labour movement ask what we can do to stop these reforms. We can support Unison’s legal challenge to these reforms. We can support the ‘Unite 4 the NHS’ campaign. We can take to the streets on 26th March and demand that these reforms are not passed. We can urge Lib Dem MPs to vote with their hearts, and the mainstream of their party, and join with Labour to defeat these reforms. Campaigners were successful in getting the Tories to drop their plans to privatise their forest. Surely we can galvanise the public against plans to privatise the NHS.
U-turn Mr Cameron, for the sake of the NHS.
Rob Peaty
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