LABOUR'S shadow health team visited hospitals throughout the North East yesterday as part of a national campaign to persuade the Government to drop its unpopular Health and Social Care Bill.
The Government’s Health and Social Care Bill is about “stealth privatisation” of the NHS and the North East must help fight the reforms, Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham said.
The party’s front-bench team of Mr Burnham, Dianne Abbott, Liz Kendall, Jamie Reed and Debbie Abrahams visited Newcastle’s Great North Children’s Hospital, Wansbeck General Hospital and the North East Ambulance Service to get NHS staff’s views on the proposed changes.
At an open meeting held at the Centre for Life in Newcastle, more than 80 healthcare professionals, MPs and members of the public attended Labour’s Drop the Bill event, where they had an opportunity to question the Ministers about the impact the NHS reforms were likely to have on the health service.
At the event, Mr Burnham insisted that the Bill would mark the end of the National Health Service and it had to be stopped. He said: “Time is running out for the NHS. Right now, we are seeing the greatest threat to the NHS in its 63-year history.
“These reforms are about stealth privatisation of health care and patients will be faced with a postcode lottery.
“GPs don’t want it, nurses don’t want it, nobody wants it – the Bill has no legitimacy.
“It will create a postcode lottery attack on the NHS, creating longer waiting times for patients. It will undermine the relationship between doctors and patients, and market forces will sweep through the health service.
“The NHS is an inspiration to the world and it is under the greatest threat imaginable. We need the people in the North East to throw their full weight behind stopping this Bill.”
Under the Health and Social Care Bill – which is currently going through the House of Lords – the proposed changes will increase competition and give clinicians control of budgets.
It would bring about some of the most radical reforms of the service in a generation through the abolition of two tiers of bureaucracy, local primary care trusts and regional strategic health authorities.
The Department of Health has insisted that the reforms are essential in safeguarding the future of the NHS, but the campaign group Keep Our NHS Public North East disagrees.
Dr Gerard Reissmann, a GP in Newcastle and a member of the group, said: “The Health and Social Care Bill will allow a flood of private companies as providers and commissioners. It will endanger the stability of the whole NHS. The Bill extends the market to places we never dreamt it could go.”
A Department of Health spokesperson said: “The Health and Social Care Bill will both safeguard the future of our NHS, and move us closer to a health service that puts patients at the heart of everything it does.
“There is strong support for our plans from large sections of GPs across the country and other professions.”
