Keep our NHS public, no cuts in education

We assembled at Top Park in Leamington, ready to march for a Public NHS and against cuts in education.

We'd been here before, one year ago, when we marched in support of the striking junior doctors.

There were approximately 400 of us (not bad for a town of 60,000) calling for a stop to privatisation and cuts in the NHS and proper funding for schools.

Some interesting banners and posters

The Coventry and Warwickshire Sustainability and Transformation Plan will see some £270 million cut through an overhaul of health services, while school budgets in Warwick and Stratford districts face cuts of some £10.5 million as part of a new national schools funding formula put forward by the previous government.

We assembled at the Pump Room Gardens for the rally.

Anna Pollert, the chair of the South Warwickshire Keep our NHS Public group, said: 'We're here to tell our local representatives and this government that we won't stand for the destruction of our NHS and our educational system by the savage cuts being imposed by the Tories. The decade 2010-2020 sees the largest ever sustained reduction in health spending as a % of GDP. The Government claims it has invested £10 billion. It hasn't. The true figure is £4.5 billion and it's not enough to meet growing health care needs. It's privatising the NHS by stealth. And the cost of running the NHS as a market costs at least £4.5 billion'.

She also read a letter from a doctor who was unable to attend: 'Best of luck with the event and thank you for all the work you're doing for the NHS. I'm afraid I won't be an NHS doctor for much longer. After speaking with 5 of my friends who have emigrated to New Zealand, I have decided to move to Ireland this summer in the hopes of a better life than I can have here. Unfortunately it seems we have reached breaking point in our hospitals to the point of danger to our patients. I wish I could stay and fight the good fight, but I feel I have no choice but to think of my own future as well. Thank you again for all your hard work. With some luck and enough courage maybe the NHS can rise from the ashes'.

Supporting the junior doctors

A short walk for health, a demonstration in Leamington to support the junior doctors and to defend the NHS, on May Day. We assembled at Top Park and walked down to the Pump Room Gardens.

The turnout was impressive.

For a town of 60,000 this was very good indeed.

Two junior doctors spoke at the rally explaining why the government's proposed (and to be enforced, if Jeremy Hunt has his way) new contract will be disastrous for the NHS.  They explained that a 7-day, 24-hour NHS for emergencies already exists.  Introducing 7 day elective care can't be done by stretching junior doctors any thinner without more receptionists, admin staff, consultants, radiographers, lab technicians and a host of other staff - to do this requires more funding and the government is not prepared to do that.

The government is not truthful when it says doctors are getting a pay rise of 13.5%. The new contract would redefine anti-social hours thus reducing pay banding for late evenings and weekends. As a result, those specialities with greater burden of anti-social hours, such as A&E, would be adversely affected, leading to a pay cut between 10% and 20%. The proposed contract also discriminates against women as it would discourage them to apply for hospital specialities where the majority of hours will be antisocial. In addition, the loss of incremental pay progression, which rewards doctors annually for increased experience and protects pay, will be abolished. This will hit less than full-time trainees the hardest, the majority of whom are women.

What this contract is asking doctors, who are already stretched to the limit, is to  go beyond the bounds of what is safe for patients. This is a money-saving exercise, a means of introducing cuts into the NHS without calling them cuts, and it's just the beginning: nurses, porters, lab technicians and all the rest of the staff who keep the NHS going are going to be the next targets.

Back in 2005, Jeremy Hunt co-authored a book Direct Democracy, calling for the NHS to be dismantled. It included the line: 'our ambition should be to break down the barriers between private and public provision, in effect denationalising the provision of health care in Britain'. The NHS is being deliberately run into the ground to pave the way for privatisation. Breaking the allegiance and loyalty of staff is one of the important strategies for attacking a public sector organisation. This is often achieved through policies that demoralise and alienate. The predictable response of junior doctors threatening to leave the NHS if the contract is imposed is therefore entirely in keeping with the ideological intent of the government. The next stage is to alienate the public from the staff: smearing doctors as apparently caring only about how much they will be paid, and that they endanger the welfare of the public is in line with this. The reality is, of course, the other way round: the primary concern of junior doctors is that the new contract endangers patient safety.

The public are overwhelmingly in favour of a publicly-funded and run NHS. Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS,  said that the NHS will survive as long as there are people prepared to fight for it. This is our task now.