“The central concern of the Socialist Health Association is that the NHS has been turned into a £200 billion cash cow for corporate interests.”
Mark Ladbrooke, Socialist Health Association, looks at what Labour’s first year in office has meant for our NHS.
Labour inherited an NHS in crisis at every level – record waiting lists worsened by a series of defensive strikes. This crisis gave us a unique opportunity to junk Tory and New Labour marketisation of health care where the NHS increasingly buys in services from corporations. Instead, as Labour Conference has agreed whenever it has been allowed to vote on the subject, we could return it to an integrated public service which provides services itself and is accountable to the electorate – not shareholders.
NHS Pay
The pay settlement (for now) has been a step forward. Many staff struggle with huge debts following extensive periods of training. Pay levels must be restored. It should be noted that shamefully the lowest NHS pay was overtaken by the minimum wage in April so had to be raised to comply with the law. Yet the latest pay settlement being ‘imposed’ by the government on health unions offers this group a mere 1.5% increase over the minimum. The latest NHS 10 year plan now threatens national pay bargaining – and this from a Labour government!
Tackling social ills
Hospitals alone can’t fix the health impacts of poverty, destitution, appalling housing and homelessness. For those on the lowest income life expectancy is actually falling in places – children are becoming physically shorter!
The government has responded with an increase the ‘living wage’, modest actions to strengthen union rights and a commitment to building social housing at scale. But these welcome gains have been undermined by a determination to cut the welfare bill (happily frustrated to a degree by principled Labour MPs) and a poisonous political discourse on migrant workers, exceptionally damaging among NHS staff.
A number of councils and even the nation of Wales have elected to become Marmot places to try to tackle massive health inequalities. The SHA supports this and urges the strongest possible local engagement.
NHS Funding
Despite the hype around the NHS settlement in the recent spending review the NHS will be funded at below the current rate of inflation in health care. In particular, government spending on crumbling NHS buildings is woeful; the deeply flawed ‘solution’ on offer seems to be a revamped Private Finance Initiative – notorious for its bad value for the taxpayer and NHS and its push to outsource more of the workforce. It looks as though much of the community based care facilities will be funded this way. Investors in health infrastructure will make a fortune.
Promises for technological solutions such as robot-assisted surgery are good but no investment appears to be available. The NHS app on your phone is likely to become a gateway for provision of private health services. The Palantir Federated Data Platform deal which involves handing over our health data to a giant US corporation (with strong interests in the war, surveillance and contracts with the Israel Occupation Force) must be opposed.
The first year of Labour has been marked by the publication of the NHS England 10 year plan. Particularly worrying is the removal of systems of accountability, Health Watch, an organisation in England set up as the voice of local patients, is to be abolished, council health scrutiny committees which could challenge the decisions of local hospital bosses are to be abolished and even the rather token public representation on the boards of NHS Foundation Trusts is to be abolished. The model of public participation seems to be based on Trip Advisor type feedback by individuals. Oh and the new breed of mayors should fix things!
The conspicuous failure to start building a National Care Service will have a huge impact on clients, councils and the NHS itself. It has suffered heavy privatisation and fragmentation. It must be fixed.
The central concern of the SHA is that the NHS has been turned into a £200 billion cash cow for corporate interests. The latest proposals reorganise and empower quangos, the ‘Integrated Care Boards’ who will have the responsibility for ‘market making’ for health companies and balancing the books. NHS Foundation trusts will operate increasingly like private companies in this market. The arrival of Alan Milburn in November at the Department of Health and Social Care’s board to “support the government’s ambitious plans for reform” was a clear sign of Wes Streeting’s political direction. Milburn was the architect of much or the market under Blair which is destroying the NHS.
Recent analysis by SHA President, Prof Allyson Pollock shows the real cost to patients of this system.
The SHA totally opposes the marketisation and privatisation of health. We have taken a strong line on ministers taking funding from health corporations – our rule change to Labour conference can be seen here.
We urge all those who support our position on the NHS in Labour to join us to maximise pressure to defend the NHS and stand with socialists in the party.
- Labour Outlook is running a series of daily articles, reviewing one year of the Starmer Government across different key areas.
- Mark Ladbrooke is the National Secretary of the Socialist Health Association. You can follow Mark on Twitter/X and follow the Socialist Health Association (SHA) on Facebook and Twitter/X.
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