Next Hackney KONP meeting, 6.30pm Tuesday 24th October 2017, Well St Surgery, 28 Shore Rd, E9 7TA Scroll down page for details.
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The General Election of June 2017, resulting in no overall majority, has created a major opportunity to promote our demands.
The Tories are determined to make huge year on year cuts to NHS budgets and privatise services. The Labour manifesto pledged investment in the NHS and to:
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The Tories want to destroy our NHS. NHS England is driving the NHS towards a US-style privatised and insurance-based system, leaving a defunded rump NHS for those who can't pay. The 44 new Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) across England are required to cut NHS spending by £22 billion by 2020 compared with 2015 spending levels.
The NE London STP is called the East London Health and Care Partnership (ELHCP). It covers Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham, City of London, Waltham Forest, Barking, Havering and Redbridge. The population of this area is set to grow by 18% - numbers equivalent to the City of Leicester, yet health bosses are tasked with "saving" approximately £850 million from a local health service which is on it's knees. To add to this, the Royal London Hospital, built through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), has saddled NE London NHS with massive debts, while social care has suffered up to 25% cuts since 2010. The closure of King Georges A&E in Romford, with 200+ acute beds, is set to go ahead, putting further pressure on other services.
NHS England now requires STPs to develop Accountable Care Systems (ACSs) and move towards Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs). These are single organisations combining all the health (and, often, social care) services in an area. Whilst we all want to see better integration of services, the Health & Social Care Act (2012) remains in place, requiring services to be put out to tender. The size and configuration of ACOs will be particularly attractive to giant healthcare corporates that run similar health organisations in the USA, so we risk wholesale takeover of the NHS by multinational corporates.
The NE London STP is called the East London Health and Care Partnership (ELHCP). It covers Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham, City of London, Waltham Forest, Barking, Havering and Redbridge. The population of this area is set to grow by 18% - numbers equivalent to the City of Leicester, yet health bosses are tasked with "saving" approximately £850 million from a local health service which is on it's knees. To add to this, the Royal London Hospital, built through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), has saddled NE London NHS with massive debts, while social care has suffered up to 25% cuts since 2010. The closure of King Georges A&E in Romford, with 200+ acute beds, is set to go ahead, putting further pressure on other services.
NHS England now requires STPs to develop Accountable Care Systems (ACSs) and move towards Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs). These are single organisations combining all the health (and, often, social care) services in an area. Whilst we all want to see better integration of services, the Health & Social Care Act (2012) remains in place, requiring services to be put out to tender. The size and configuration of ACOs will be particularly attractive to giant healthcare corporates that run similar health organisations in the USA, so we risk wholesale takeover of the NHS by multinational corporates.
- Campaigners across England and locally in NE London aim to stop this. Join our campaign groups
- Lobby your local councillors and MP. Demand that they oppose all cuts in services
- Demand an end to the market in NHS services; reverse privatisation
- No to the closure of King Georges A&E and closure of further beds at the hospital
East London Health and Care Partnership (ELHCP) and NE London Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STP)
Homerton cleaning, catering and security staff are facing massive cuts by privatised company
This is the website for Hackney and City Keep Our NHS Public (Hackney KONP).
It includes information about:
It includes information about:
- Government changes that are wrecking the NHS in England, the impact on local NHS services, myths and lies about the NHS
- local issues - including the new plans for NHS Devolution and integrated NHS and social care and threats to services at Homerton Hospital & costs of the Barts and the London PFI
- NHS Transformation - the new 'Sustainability and Transformation Plans' (STPs) that will impose huge cuts and implement 'new models' of care that are untested and potentially unsafe
- national action to restore our once highly effective and cost-effective NHS - including the Campaign for the Pollock-Roderick NHS Reinstatement Bill 2015 (now renamed the NHS Bill).
- Links to Hackney & Marion Macalpine's photographic exhibition about NHS Privatisation: How Come We Didn't Know?
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Sustainability and Transformation Plans: A Motion
click above for a motion that you can take to your local political party branch, together with a background briefing on the STP programme. |
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STPs - A Dagger Pointed At The Heart Of The NHS
The effects will be devastating, with the closure of beds, of key units including paediatric, maternity and cardiovascular and of whole A&E departments which are now bearing the brunt of the cuts elsewhere in the NHS. Entire hospitals will close in The Black Country and in Leicestershire, while many others including Cheshire and Merseyside will have ‘fewer beds’. Diane Abbott speaking in Westminster debate, 14 Sept 2016 (links to article & full speech in Huff Post) |
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North East London Sustainability & Transformation Plan (STP) (aka Slash, Trash & Privatise plan).
The local NE London plan is one of 44 covering all England. It is secret, by order of NHS England. The NE London plan involves three parts:
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Don't privatise Homerton Hospital's pathology lab
Contractors building a new pathology lab at the Homerton have gone bust, leaving the Homerton with massive debts. There are huge questions to be answered about the contract with the builders - but most urgently, managers are now considering proposals to privatise the pathology services. Homerton pathology provides an excellent responsive and high quality service. Privatisation is a huge concern. Don't let them destroy our excellent local service. Sign the petition at the link. |
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Govt NHS policy has one aim and one aim only: bring system to its knees so sell-off to friends can be sold as answer
Govt imposing £22 bn 'efficiency savings' (cuts) on NHS on top of £20 bn cuts of past 5 years. click above for Twitter link to National Health Action Party |
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WHAT'S HAPPENING TO OUR NHS?
The government is tearing the NHS apart through funding cuts and privatisation, putting private profits ahead of patients. We urgently need new legislation to restore our NHS. NHS POLITICAL HISTORY Click here for an excellent account by Professor Ray Tallis of the development of the NHS and the political attacks that threaten its very existence. (TLS article, September 2016) SPENDING ON NHS Government claims the NHS is 'unaffordable' and 'unsustainable'. Think-tanks funded by vested interests regularly make proposals for NHS payments - £10 for GP or A&E visits, £75 'hotel costs' for an overnight hospital stay and so on. Yet England spends far less on healthcare than France or Germany. And billions of NHS cash is wasted through costs of the NHS market, PFI schemes and private profit. COSTS OF MANAGING A MARKET IN HEALTHCARE Before the NHS market was introduced, just 5% of the budget went on administration. The introduction of the market meant splitting the NHS into separate 'purchaser' and 'provider' arms and huge additional legal and administrative costs of buying and selling services, tendering and managing contracts. By 2010 administration stood at 14% of the NHS budget. Since the Health & Social Care Act of 2012 has forced more services to be marketised. Abolishing the NHS market and returning to pre-market administration cost levels would save between £4.5bn- £10bn every year! PRIVATE FINANCE INITIATIVE (PFI) Billions of NHS funding is squandered on extortionate PFI contracts. The Department of Health has 118 PFI schemes with a capital value of £11.6bn. But repayments on these schemes will amount to a staggering £79.1bn. PFI repayments are already bankrupting some NHS trusts and the costs are rising steeply. PRIVATISATION OF NHS SERVICES More than £12bn worth of NHS contracts have been awarded to the private sector, siphoning NHS funds into private profits. The EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and CETA trade treaties will force all NHS services to be tendered. Sustainability & Transformation Plans will force a huge new wave of privatisation from 2017. SUSTAINABILITY & TRANSFORMATION PLANS (STPs) - aka Slash Trash & Privatise plans New STP plans will slash £millions from local budgets through cuts and closures and impose new models of care with fewer hospital beds, less doctors and professional staff, privatised services and risks to patient care and safety. FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH NHS These policies are wrecking the NHS. Government is on course to replace our healthcare system with US-style, hugely expensive, privatised and insurance-based healthcare. The NHS will remain, but only as a residual and greatly underfunded service of last resort, and caring for unprofitable cases. Our aim is to stop this! INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS Until recently the NHS has provided outstanding and very cost-effective healthcare. We've paid less for our healthcare, enjoyed better health outcomes and better satisfaction rates than almost every other country. Click link above for details of the 2014 Commonwealth Fund study, with NHS data up to 2010. WHAT YOU CAN DO TO SUPPORT THE NHS Click here to support the Pollock-Roderick NHS Bill that will reinstate the NHS and to email MPs and parliamentary candidates asking them to support this bill. MODEL MOTION SUPPORTING THE NHS BILL -
for trades unions, political parties, mumsnet, tweeting. Ask your friends and family to promote this Bill too. 
We are the Hackney and City branch of the national campaign Keep Our NHS Public (KONP). We are campaigning for a publicly funded, publicly provided and publicly accountable National Health Service, both locally and nationally. We campaign against UK government measures to undermine the NHS by promoting marketisation, privatisation, and fragmentation and against cuts and reductions in NHS services. We aim to highlight and oppose the impact of these UK government policies on our local NHS services. More info.
KONP national demands:
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CAMPAIGNING WITH (among many others)
What can we do to save the NHS?
Join our campaigns to save the NHS and protect our rights to comprehensive, high quality health services, free at the point of delivery:
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