By Left Horizons reporters
When the Labour conference opens, it may well be the delegates from the Socialist Health Association who are the first to the rostrum to object to the way their resolution has been treated.
In a letter its supporters in trade unions, the SHA members in Unite have explained that their resolution (see below for the full text) has been manipulated in such a way as to make it less likely that it will even be discussed. The SHA letter states:
“The Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) for Labour’s 2023 conference in Liverpool this weekend has ruled various motions consistent with union policy on the NHS to be in order.
However the CAC has divided NHS motions into two groupings going forward in the priorities ballot, rather than all being in the same compositing meeting.
Motions consistent with union policy have been placed into a grouping called “HEALTH SERVICES AND FUNDING”,
Motions asking for ‘mixed economy of care’, ‘the NHS just as a preferred provider’, the use of the private sector to bring down waiting lists’ have been placed under a grouping called “An NHS fit for the future”.
The Socialist Health Association, Doctors in Unite and many Constituency Labour Parties believe this is a deliberate attempt to sideline the progressive motions because they are about repealing the H&C Act, stopping outsourcing and also legislating on corporate donations to political parties from the private health sector”.
The letter, from Mark Ladbrooke, Chair of the SHA, asks members in Unite to bring a point of order at the start of the conference, to oppose the CAC-1 report, on the grounds that the CAC has made two separate groups on the NHS to go for the priorities ballot, when all motions should be in the same compositing meeting. Alternatively, the SHA will challenge the CAC, hoping others will support it.
The full text of the SHA resolution reads as follow:
An NHS Fit for the Future.
Conference celebrates – 75 years of Labour’s National Health Service – the continuing provision by the Welsh government of a planned, publicly provided and funded NHS. Conference confirms its support for the 2022 Conference NHS Composite. Central to this is the elimination of the Tories’ corporate capture of NHS commissioning structures and service provision.
Conference notes the disastrous deterioration in our NHS during 13 years of Tory misrule, in particular the failure to match the spending increases of the last Labour Government and the passage of the Health and Care Act (HCA), which fragments the English NHS into 42 Integrated Care Systems modelled on US market provision. Labour will abolish the HCA.
Conference reaffirms Labour’s commitment to 100% direct employment of NHS workers and the total elimination of outsourcing. This will enable trade unions to secure fair pay and conditions for their members, whose selfless work during the pandemic has saved thousands of lives.
The next Labour government will ban political donations from private healthcare corporations, their lobbyists, or those invested in private healthcare corporations. Labour and Labour MPs will not accept such donations. Conference therefore resolves
● To repeal the Health and Care Act 2022 and to reverse all aspects of integrated care systems at the earliest opportunity.
● To fully renationalise England’s universal, comprehensive, publicly provided national health service with funding levels in line with the achievements of the last Labour Government
Union members will want to know how their delegations voted
It will be interesting to see how some trade union delegations vote on the issue of Labour and Labour MPs “not accepting” donations from private health care corporations, lobbyists or those invested in private healthcare. This is a direct challenge to those ‘Labour’ MPs who have taken donations from individuals connected to private health.
The Unite National Industrial Sector Committee (NISC) for Health called on its union delegation at conference “under no circumstances” to support any resolutions that include support for NHS privatisation or the so so-called ‘mixed economy’ in health.
Members of other NHS unions, like the GMB and UNISON, will no doubt be interested to know how their union delegations vote on these issues and on the SHA resolution, should it be put to conference. Are they following their own union policies and the interests of their members who work in the NHS?
