Left Horizons want the Tories out on July 4th – but here we publish two short contributions, from Andy Ford and John Wake, which point out the dangers of future Labour government policy on the NHS. Labour movement activists need to prepare to defend the NHS both in terms of its funding and of any present or future privatisation. Our healthcare is not for profit or for sale! For a fully funded, totally publicly owned health service!
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1) Under Starmer/Streeting the NHS is not for sale. Or is it?
By Andy Ford (Warrington South Labour member)
The official Labour Party manifesto has had the pledge that “The NHS is not for sale” removed. You don’t have to think for long to work out why.
“NHS not for sale” was passed by Labour Party conference, and is the policy of virtually every trade union. It even made it through the convoluted and anti-democratic National Policy Forum (see our recent article here)
It has now disappeared without trace.
The NPF document said that:
“Under Labour, the NHS is not for sale. Labour will always protect our NHS as a publicly-funded service, free at the point of use that will secure healthcare for all.”
This phrase does not appear in the manifesto presented to the country. Instead the manifesto has a quite different formulation – “With Labour, it [the NHS] will always be publicly owned and publicly funded” (page 93), and “to get a grip on waiting lists” by “incentivising staff to carry out additional appointments out of hours” and by using “spare capacity in the independent sector” (page 95).
Code for privatisation
More sinisterly the manifesto says, “Labour’s mission is to build an NHS fit for the future. Investment alone won’t be enough to tackle the problems facing the NHS; it must go hand in hand with fundamental reform” (page 93). In the days of Tony Blair and Alan Milburn, this was code for privatisation.
The wording in the Labour manifesto leaves the door wide open for privatisation, so long as the service is ultimately publicly funded and free to users. The lobbyists time and cash has not been wasted.
But of all the unions, only Unite refused to endorse the manifesto at the Clause V meeting on 7th June. That means that the Unison and GMB delegates to that meeting must have voted for a manifesto that permits NHS privatisation. Members and activists in those unions will be looking for answers from their delegates and executive committees.
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2 ) Conservatives and Labour will both squeeze NHS funding
Thanks to John Wake (Harlow Labour member) for this information:-
Don’t expect a Starmer government to relieve the NHS funding crisis. An analysis of the election manifestos by the Nuffield Trust states that:
“. . . the frugal spending commitments follow three years in which NHS England’s spending has either been cut in real terms, or held close to flat. This means that, if any of the three parties’ pledges were implemented, the period 2022/23 to 2028/29 would see the tightest and most sustained NHS funding squeeze in recorded history (going back to 1979/80), resulting in annual real terms increases of just 0.4% under the Conservative pledges, 0.5% under the Labour pledges and 0.7% under the Liberal Democrat pledges: all below the most recent rate of population growth, even before adjusting for the increased health care need of an ageing population.”
https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/how-much-spending-on-the-nhs-have-the-major-parties-committed-to-in-their-election-manifestos
It is pretty obvious that Starmer and Streeting will not be offering up any fundamental changes to the NHS privatisations over decades. A simple expose of where they stand is in Corbyn’s North Islington constituency. Starmer having ensured Corbyn be removed from the Labour Party has parachuted in a candidate, Praful Nargund, a firm believer in a privatised NHS. That is probably as blatant a statement as it will get until after the 4 July 2024 GE.