Oppose NHS cuts and privatisation at the 'Vanguard' Conference; Manchester Conference Centre

CALL OUT TO NHS CAMPAIGNS AND ACTIVISTS – in the Northwest and beyond on Wednesday 9th Dec.

Bring Banners and Leaflets about NHS privatisation and devodeception!

https://www.facebook.com/events/177399495938517/

What are ‘Vanguards’? They are ‘areas for developing new models of care’. NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens convinced the NHS that this isn’t yet another wave of pilots, but… They are a major step in his Five Year Forward View plans: dictionary defines of a vanguard: foremost division or front part of an army or advance guard.

Why have ‘Vanguards’ been created? Vanguards are the ‘advance guard’ in the battle for the heart and soul of the NHS. Many NHS organisations country-wide, behaving in different ways – is like letting all our schools use their own curriculum. NHS managers have accepted a share of the ‘pump-priming’ £200m government bribe to join this scheme…on top of the £millions spent bringing in consultants from firms eg McKinsey, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Kaiser Permanente, who are already involved in: setting up private healthcare systems.

What is the hoped-for outcome? Each new arrangement makes local services work reorganise: ostensibly to begin a “widespread, patient- centred change”. Look closer: that means cuts in State funding for the NHS, in addition to the savage cuts to Social Services adult care – just when staff at all levels are highlighting chronic funding shortages – just as winter approaches. Each new organisation can then be linked up with others, ready packaged up – for sale.

Does this link to devolution? Yes it does, as devolving the budget to an entire area, such as Greater Manchester, is just another way of packaging up an area ready – for sale. Will our health services – no longer national – remain free? Most unlikely. Pushing Health services together with Social Services makes it easier to levy charges. The NHS & Community Care Act 1990 forced Local Authorities to ‘commission’ private carer services, so Home Care services are now mostly privatised: – so staff work under much worse conditions (eg zero hour contracts). Due to government cuts, only the frailest people now qualify for care: many now receiving less carer time, eg 15 minute calls only. Services once free from District Nurses, now performed by Home Carers – are paid for by service users. The Health & Social Care Act 2012 extends this, as more and more aspects of health care will occur outside hospitals, and: health services can utilise Local Authorities systems for charging. WE WILL PROTEST AGAINST THIS CAREFULLY PLANNED ATTACK ON OUR NHS.
For further details about the event, contact: [email protected]

GP surgeries have been 'encouraged' to form private businesses, through Federations. A representative from one such, from West Wakefield Health and Wellbeing Ltd. will speak at 10am. Wakefield CCG has 2 Vanguards operating in it's area. In the same way that the government encouraged heads to back Academisation with wads of cash, so GPs are being given the same inducement to back Vanguards. The Multi Speciality Provider is an exact copy of the US system.

It is a concerted effort to withdraw access to treatment, in the same way that it was withdrawn by Nixon's reforms to introduce Keiser Permenente's system in the early 70s. The emphasis on Commercial in Confidence reduces accountability and transparency. The reduction of quality practitioners by way of the new 'skill mix' see the Junior Doctors struggle, will mean less qualified, therefore cheaper staff on most probably, zero hours contracts. The services are to be provided by a mix of private providers, charities and NHS.

There is no choice offered by these Vanguards, any more than there was in the old NHS. We oppose NHS cuts and profiteering from ill people.