Bye Bye NHS

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=77wNre45Xtc

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From Bevan to Streeting: How Labour is Privatising the NHS
By Paul Knaggs -September 8, 2024

labourheartlands.com/from-bevan-to-streeting-how-labour-is-privatising-the-nhs/

Labour’s NHS Transformation: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
In a move that would make Nye Bevan turn in his grave, the Labour Party seems hell-bent on finishing what the Tories started – the slow, insidious privatisation of our beloved National Health Service. Under the guise of ‘reform’ and ‘reducing waiting lists’, our supposed defenders of the working class are laying out the red carpet for private healthcare vultures to feast on the carcass of our public institutions.

In reality, Labour’s so-called transformation of the NHS is a Trojan horse, smuggling private interests into the sanctum of public healthcare. Wes Streeting, our supposedly noble Health Secretary, trumpets his crusade to slash waiting lists. But his chosen weapon? Outsourcing patients to private hospitals. It’s a sleight of hand worthy of the most cunning conjurer: use public money to fatten private wallets, all under the banner of efficiency.

What’s conspicuously absent from this grand plan? Any meaningful investment in the lifeblood of the NHS – its people. There’s nary a whisper about training new doctors and nurses, resurrecting the vital bursary scheme, or reviving the vocational training that once saw young nurses splitting their time between college and wards. These initiatives, you see, would be too much like a cure rather than the sticking plaster Streeting seems to prefer.

This approach is akin to treating a gaping wound with a designer bandage – it might look impressive, but it does precious little to address the underlying injury. Instead of bolstering the NHS from within, nurturing its workforce and expanding its capacity, Labour seems content to outsource its responsibilities, along with its patients.

The tragedy is that this short-term fix will likely exacerbate the very problems it purports to solve. By funnelling resources into private healthcare, we’re not expanding the pool of medical professionals; we’re merely shuffling them around, often at a premium. It’s a zero-sum game where the only winners are the private healthcare providers, laughing all the way to the bank.

But let’s peel back this onion of deception. These private hospitals Streeting is so keen on aren’t the bastions of medical excellence he’d have us believe. They’re parasites, feeding off the system. They don’t employ their own doctors or nurses. Oh no, that would be too much like honest work. Instead, they contract NHS staff, to carry out job-by-job operation by operation contracts. It’s a vampiric relationship, draining the lifeblood from our public health service.

And who’s whispering sweet nothings of privatisation into Streeting’s ear? None other than Alan Milburn, that blast from New Labour’s past. Milburn, the architect of the disastrous Private Finance Initiative, a scheme that’s been bleeding the NHS dry for decades. This is the man Streeting proudly claims as his advisor. It’s like asking a fox to guard the henhouse and then wondering why all the chickens have disappeared.

Credit to GB News for asking this belter if a question to Wes Streeting.

Doing the journalism our main broadcasters refuse to do.
pic.twitter.com/CtuHzynf7K

— Tory Fibs (@toryfibs) September 8, 2024
Streeting told Camilla Tominey on GB News: “I make no bones about the fact that in opposition and now in government, I’ve turned to Alan Milburn for advice.

“He has been with me in opposition and in government, helping to shape Labour’s reform agenda, advising me as the Secretary of State, and of course meetings that Alan Milburn has attended, that I have invited him to.

“I have chosen to share papers with him and every other attendee of meetings, nothing commercially sensitive, nothing inappropriate, but meetings because he’s an outstanding former Health Secretary and I’m proud to have Alan Milburn’s support and advice.”

Asked if Milburn has a pass for the Department of Health, Streeting said: “I don’t know, actually…he’s a former Health Secretary with an outstanding track record. And look, we can continue down this line of questioning. I’ll continue to say the same thing.

“I am not remotely embarrassed or apologetic about having Alan Milburn involved in helping this Government to shape a reform agenda that would be able to deliver the same kind of results as the last Labour government.”

Tominey also asked if he was happy sharing official documents with Milburn and Streeting replied: “Alan Milburn is one of my advisors. He comes in to advise me as the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.

“I’ve chosen to ask for Alan’s help because he has an outstanding record as Health Secretary, a record that the Conservatives can’t even begin to touch, a record that they trashed in their 14 years of disaster and incompetence.”

Streeting defends this unholy alliance with all the zeal of a convert. He’s “not remotely embarrassed or apologetic” about Milburn’s involvement. Well, he bloody well should be! Milburn’s track record reads like a privateer’s charter. From his time as Health Secretary to his lucrative post-government career with private healthcare firms, Milburn has never met a public service he didn’t want to sell off.

Remember, this is the man who signed deals with American healthcare companies back in 2002, claiming it was to keep the elderly out of hospitals. In reality, it was the thin end of the wedge, the start of a creeping privatisation that’s been eating away at the NHS ever since. In reality, it was another step towards dismantling the socialist principles upon which our NHS was founded. It’s private health care funded by the public.

Let’s not forget Milburn’s cosy relationship with Bridgepoint Capital, a private equity firm with significant investments in private healthcare. Or his role as Chair of PwC’s UK Health Industry Oversight Board. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

And now, here we are, with Labour supposedly the guardians of our NHS, inviting this Trojan horse right into the heart of health policy. It’s a betrayal of everything the NHS stands for, a slap in the face to every nurse, doctor, and patient who’s ever relied on our public health service.

This isn’t transformation; it’s capitulation. It’s an admission that the party once proud to have created the NHS now lacks the vision or will to truly reform it. Instead of the radical reimagining our health service desperately needs, we’re offered a reheated serving of market-driven solutions that have consistently failed to deliver.

As George Orwell so presciently warned, “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” Today, we find ourselves unable to distinguish between Tory and Labour when it comes to NHS policy.

While Streeting preaches the gospel of efficiency, we’d do well to follow the money trail. It leads us straight to the coffers of private health firms, who’ve been more than generous with their donations to Labour’s front bench. And who’s sitting pretty atop this pile of corporate largesse? None other than our crusading Health Secretary himself.

These aren’t mere donations; they’re investments. Each pound is a down payment on future profits, a bet that Labour will continue to carve up the NHS and serve it on a silver platter to these corporate vultures. It’s lobbying dressed up as philanthropy, influence peddling masquerading as civic duty.

Streeting, of course, would have us believe there’s no connection between these donations and his enthusiasm for outsourcing. But one doesn’t need to be a cynic to smell the stench of quid pro quo. It’s the same old story: money talks, and in the corridors of power, it’s shouting from the rooftops.

Hello 🤍
Yday I tweeted that Shadow Health Sec Wes Streeting had "received nearly £200,000 payments from private healthcare companies."
To be accurate, the £193,000 he HAS received was from people and companies with investments in, and strong links to, private healthcare…

— Carol Vorderman (@carolvorders) June 15, 2023
This isn’t just a conflict of interest; it’s a full-blown collision. How can we trust the judgement of a Health Secretary who’s in hock to the very industry he’s meant to be regulating? It’s redesigning for maximum profit and minimum.

The scale of these donations should shock us, but in our jaded political landscape, it’s met with little more than a shrug. We’ve become so accustomed to the revolving door between politics and big business that we barely notice when it spins.

But we must notice. We must care. Because every pound donated by these health firms is a pound invested in dismantling the NHS as we know it. It’s a down payment on a future where healthcare is a commodity, not a right, where profit margins matter more than patient outcomes.

This isn’t just about Streeting or Labour. It’s about the very soul of our healthcare system. Make no mistake, this isn’t about reducing waiting lists or improving care. It’s about ideology, Tory Ideology. It’s about dismantling the NHS piece by piece, outsourcing it to the highest bidder. It’s New Labour’s unfinished business, and Streeting seems all too eager to finish the job.

rest in link

[Admin]

Privatisation or Bust: Starmer’s Stark NHS Reform Ultimatum
By Paul Knaggs -September 13, 2024

labourheartlands.com/privatisation-or-bust-starmers-stark-nhs-reform-ultimatum/

Starmer’s NHS Threat: No Money Without Reform, Privatise or Perish
Who would have thought we’d see the day when a Labour Prime Minister would resort to blackmail, holding the nation’s health service hostage unless we acquiesce to his grand designs for ‘reform’? Well, dear reader, some of us did, and we shouted ourselves hoarse trying to warn you well before the ballot boxes were dusted off and Starmer got his foot in the doorway of No. 10.

“No extra NHS funding without reform,” declares Prime Minister Starmer, his words dripping with the oily sheen of neoliberal dogma. Let us translate this doublespeak:

“We shall not pump a single penny more into your healthcare unless you allow us to flay it open for the vultures of private enterprise.”

This man, who once paraded about in the garb of socialism clinging to Jeremy Corbyn’s shirt tales like a little lamb, telling tall stories of his family connections to the NHS, and his saintly mother’s care, well – the promises he made now stands before us with a ‘For Sale’ sign hung around the neck of our NHS.

This ‘man of the people’ has the audacity to promise a 10-year plan for the health service, grandiosely billing it as “the biggest reimagining of the NHS” since its inception. One wonders if this ‘reimagining’ involves seeing how many private companies can feast on the carcass of our public health system before the bones are picked clean.

“That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.”

— Noam Chomsky
To those who backed him, who believed his honeyed words of progress and change, I say this: shame on you. You have been duped, hoodwinked, bamboozled by a political chameleon who has revealed his true colours again and again…

Starmer’s three-pronged attack – sorry, ‘reform’ – reads like a neoliberal wish list: a digital NHS (because nothing says ‘care’ like a chatbot diagnosing your chest pain), moving care from hospitals to communities (read: closing hospitals and replacing them with underfunded local services), and focusing on prevention over sickness (which sounds suspiciously like “it’s your fault you’re ill, so why should we pay – Join a gym!”).

It comes after the Darzi report, commissioned by Labour post-election. The report paints a grim picture of our NHS. It speaks of declining productivity, “ballooning” waits, and “awful” emergency services. Yet, curiously, the good Lord Darzi’s remit didn’t stretch to actually suggesting solutions. How convenient for a government chomping at the bit to implement its own ‘solutions’.

Let’s be clear about what this ‘reform’ really means. It’s not about improving patient care or supporting our tireless NHS staff. No, it’s about carving up our health service and serving it on a silver platter to private vultures who see pound signs where they should see patients.

This so-called ‘neighbourhood health service’ Starmer proposes is nothing more than a Trojan horse for privatisation. He speaks of ‘digital consultations’ and ‘high street healthcare’ as if they’re revolutionary concepts, when in reality, they’re just prettier words for ‘cheaper’ and ‘profitable’.

To add insult to permanent injury, Health Secretary Wes Streeting, channelling his inner Tony Blair, promises to be “tough on ill-health”. One can’t help but wonder if this toughness extends to being tough on the causes of ill health – like, say, poverty, poor housing, and the stress of living under a government that sees your health as a profit opportunity.

The Darzi report, for all its ‘raw honesty’, misses the forest for the trees. Yes, the NHS is struggling, but not because it needs more market forces. It’s struggling because it’s been systematically underfunded, understaffed, and undermined by successive governments who see it as a burden rather than a birthright.

The report resulted from a nine-week review by the independent peer and NHS surgeon Lord Darzi.

He was asked by Labour, shortly after the election, to identify the failings in the health service, but his remit did not stretch to coming up with solutions.

His findings present a stark picture of a service which he says is in “serious trouble” with declining productivity, “ballooning” waits and “awful” emergency services that put patients at risk.

The fact, that Lord Darzi produced a report recommending just this in 2007, when he was working for the Blair government has not gone unnoticed.

And no! We won’t forget the Tories’ role in this sorry saga. Their policy of austerity in the 2010s left the NHS chronically weakened, with crumbling hospitals and outdated technology. But rather than rectify these issues, Starmer seems intent on using them as justification for further privatisation.

However, the irony of Starmer evoking the spirit of 1948 in his speech while simultaneously dismantling the principles upon which the NHS was founded is not lost on us. As he talks of a “neighbourhood health service” with “more tests, scans and healthcare offered on high streets”, one can almost hear the cash registers chiming in the background.

Remember, when they say ‘reform’, they mean ‘Sell Off’. When they say ‘efficiency’, they mean ‘cuts’. And when they say ‘no alternative’, they mean ‘we lack the imagination and the will to truly serve the people’.

Last year on #GMB Dr Amir Khan brilliantly explained in just over a minute how using the private sector undermines the NHS & hastens its demise.pic.twitter.com/bg00HDeQng

— Saul Staniforth (@saulstaniforth) September 12, 2024
We find ourselves in a moment of crisis, yes. But the solution is not to throw open the doors to profiteers and snake oil salesmen. It is to recommit to the principles of public ownership, of healthcare free at the point of use, of a service run for people, not profit.

As George Orwell, that great chronicler of political doublespeak, once wrote, “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” So let us be revolutionaries. Let us speak the truth: The NHS is not for sale, not now, not ever.

As Jeremy Corbyn rightly points out, the NHS has been haemorrhaging money to private healthcare profits since 2012 – £10 million every week, to be precise. If Starmer truly wanted to save money, he’d stop this privatisation gravy train in its tracks. But no, it seems our Labour leader is more interested in conducting the train than derailing it.

The people don’t want the NHS run like a market. They want it run like a National Health Service – a radical concept, I know. But in Starmer’s brave new world, it seems the ‘national’ part is negotiable, and ‘health’ comes second to ‘profit’.

The battle for the soul of our NHS is not over. It’s just beginning. And in this fight, we must stand united, resolute, and unwavering in our belief that healthcare is a right, not a privilege to be bought and sold.

For if we lose this fight, we lose not just a service, but a fundamental part of what makes us who we are as a nation. And that, dear reader, is a price too high to pay for any ‘reform’.

[Admin]

EveryDoctor Is Running Its Most Important Campaign Yet
By Hannah Sharland, The Canary.
September 30, 2024
Resist!

popularresistance.org/united-kingdom-everydoctor-is-running-its-most-important-campaign-yet/

And Labour Must Listen.
Canary columnist Dr Julia Grace-Patterson’s campaign group EveryDoctor is building a manifesto to fix the NHS. With the input of hundreds of doctors, it’s creating a blueprint of the urgent actions the new government should be taking after fourteen years of Tory destruction. That is, this is the plan Labour should be putting forward – but has so far offered only more of the same privatisation that got the NHS into this mess.

It aims to host a meeting with MPs on 10 October to kick off a series of parliamentary briefings spelling out the manifesto’s demands. So now, EveryDoctor is asking members of the public to join it in calling on MPs to attend this vital session.

Tory NHS Mess Meets More Privatisation Under Labour
So far, health secretary Wes Streeting’s plans for the NHS have amounted to little more than Tory privatisation 2.0. In just the few months since Labour won the election alone, both Streeting and the new Labour government more broadly have signalled this in a number of ways. Some have been overt, while others less blatant, including:

Attending a Tony Blair Institute event. As Grace-Patterson pointed out for the Canary, this sends alarm bells ‘blair-ing’ over New Labour’s previous Private Finance Initiative scam.
Then, there’s Streeting’s advisor Alan Milburn. Again, another potential sign of a Blair era reprisal – given Milburn was health secretary to the New Labour prime minister. Not to mention that he has taken millions from private healthcare gigs himself. Nonetheless, he has been at official departmental meetings with Streeting already.
The new government’s cabinet taking over half a million pounds from firms connected to the private healthcare sector.
Letting private healthcare, big pharma, and health insurance companies host fringe events and stands at Labour’s conference.
Now, Streeting’s punchy three-word slogan masquerading as a genuine solution is that the NHS must “reform or die”. Of course, what he invariably means by this is that he wants to serve up more of the NHS on a platter to the private sector. Essentially, he means to outsource provision of services – all supposedly to bring down the ballooning waiting lists. This is, of course, privatisation in a nutshell.

Considering that in the election campaign, Streeting quite literally said the new government will “go further than New Labour ever did” on NHS privatisation, the writing is very visibly on the wall.

All the while, after over a decade of the Tories chronically underfunding the NHS, Starmer has declared there’ll be no new cash coming its way without said reform.

Of course, this is everything EveryDoctor has been railing against. It’s why the group is stepping up its campaign to take the new Labour government to task on the NHS.

EveryDoctor: #RebuildTheNHS
EveryDoctor’s current campaign – #RebuildTheNHS – has two key parts. Firstly, it’s seeking the views of as many doctors as possible. It wants them to feed their opinions on the most urgent NHS priorities for the government to implement, into its manifesto. The group hopes to gather these from at least 1,000 doctors.

And so far, so good. More than 300 doctors have already contributed to the manifesto since it launched the campaign.

Alongside its manifesto request for doctors, it’s also calling on people to contact their MPs. EveryDoctor has a letter tool ready for members of the public to send off an email to their representatives in parliament. This asks politicians to turn up to EveryDoctors first parliamentary briefing on 10 October.

This will be the first in a series of sessions it intends to hold to engage MPs over its manifesto. You can send a letter to your MP here.

Ahead of this, it also needs a team of volunteers to generously lend it their time. Specifically, between Monday 30 September and Friday 4 October, it aims to telephone the offices of every single MP. Volunteers will call on MPs to attend the first meeting.

EveryDoctor is asking anyone with even a few spare hours, and a love for the NHS to get involved. The group will provide volunteers with a “calling script” and support throughout. If you want to help with this, you can register your interest and availability here.

Needless to say, the meaningful “change” the NHS sorely needs clearly isn’t coming from the new Labour government. If there’s a way to turnaround fourteen years of Tory austerity wreck and ruin of the NHS, it’s going to be through a vibrant grassroots movement. EveryDoctor is already leading the charge on this – and wants as many people as possible to be part of it. So, if you can spare some time, make sure to get involved.

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMFFVuhgcBU

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EveryDoctor’s Campaign To Fight NHS Privatisation Is Taking Off
By Hannah Sharland, The Canary.
October 21, 2024
Organize!

popularresistance.org/everydoctors-campaign-to-fight-nhs-privatisation-is-taking-off/

But It Needs Your Help.
Campaign group EveryDoctor is calling for MPs to step up to fix the NHS. The group has built a manifesto with the input of hundreds of doctors. This blueprint spells out a series of urgent actions the new government must now make to mend the UK’s ailing health services and stop NHS privatisation.

Already, the campaign group has engaged with over sixty MPs, but there’s still more work to do to get the rest – including the new Labour government – on board. So, it urgently needs help to get more to sign up for the next steps in its campaign.

EveryDoctor’s Campaign To Rebuild The NHS And Fight Privatisation
EveryDoctor is currently running its #RebuildTheNHS campaign calling on the new Labour government to take action to do just that.

First, the group sought out the views of as many doctors as possible to get their opinions on the most urgent priorities for the government to implement. It has culminated these into a powerful new manifesto to rebuild the NHS.

Crucially, the campaign rails against NHS privatisation – and presents the real problems – and solutions – that doctors are up against after fourteen years of Conservative governments destroying the NHS. Naturally, the campaign is also in response to the Labour government’s plans for the NHS. As the Canary has previously pointed out, so far it has been Tory privatisation 2.0. The latest sign of this trajectory is health secretary Wes Streeting officially welcoming Blair-era architect of NHS privatisation Alan Milburn into the fold at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

Alongside its manifesto request for doctors, it has been calling on people to contact their MPs. Through its letter tool, over 3,000 members of the public sent off an email to their representatives in parliament. It asked politicians to turn up to EveryDoctor’s first parliamentary briefing on 10 October.

This was the first in a series of sessions it intends to hold to engage MPs over its manifesto. And thanks to those over 3,000 members of the public sending out these letters – as well as volunteers telephoning the offices of every single MP – 63 MPs have already engaged.

Cross-Party Support But Where’s The Labour Government?
It has garnered cross-party support – publicly, Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, and Plaid Cymru MPs have engaged. After the first session on 10 October, EveryDoctor founder and Canary columnist Dr Julia Grace Patterson announced the names of some of the MPs who’ve done so:

56 MPs are now engaging with our @everydoctoruk #RebuildTheNHS campaign. An astonishing start😮💙- here are some of their names! Please RT to encourage others to get involved! 💙💙 pic.twitter.com/fhE9Sl2QGs

— Dr Julia Grace Patterson💙 (@jujuliagrace) October 10, 2024


So far then, this includes:

Labour: Simon Opher, Ian Lavery, Richard Baker, Matthew Pennycock, John Trickett
Liberal Democrat: Steve Darling, Anna Sabine, Sarah Gibson, Angus MacDonald
Conservative: Mike Wood
Plaid Cymru: Ben Lake
Independent: Ian Byrne
Obviously, many more have engaged with the campaign – but have yet to declare publicly or confirm their support. To date though, only one MP from the government – housing minister Matthew Pennycook has publicly confirmed his support for it. Notable absences then, include health secretary Streeting – or indeed any minister from the DHSC.

Tell Your MP To Turn Up For The NHS
However, this is all just the beginning of EveryDoctor’s campaign. It has three more meetings planned.

At these, the campaign group will put forward the priority issues within its doctors’ manifesto for the NHS. It also intends to host NHS doctors to provide powerful testimony about the situation on the frontline.

Patterson and the EveryDoctor team have been thrilled to see the appetite for improving the NHS among MPs. She said that they’ve:

been blown away by their engagement in the campaign so far. We have a lot of work to do, but feel hopeful that we will achieve much-needed change together.

So, Patterson said that:

The NHS is in a state of absolute emergency, and our new government is not moving quickly enough to avert disaster this winter. We desperately need things to be safer for patients and more supportive for staff. EveryDoctor will do everything we can to assist MPs to create change to safeguard lives in the NHS.

Over 800 people have called on their MPs to attend these already – but EveryDoctor needs all hands on deck to get as many MPs as possible to come along to its vital sessions. You can send a letter to your MP here and tell them to turn up to rebuild the NHS.

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Creating a new 10-Year Health Plan
A new 10-Year Health Plan for the NHS is under way.

Find out below how to share your views.

www.england.nhs.uk/long-term-plan/

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Labour manifesto ‘not fit for the future’ NHS campaigners claim

bright-green.org/2024/07/01/labour-manifesto-not-fit-for-the-future-nhs-campaigners-claim/

Campaign group Keep Our NHS Public has claimed that the Labour Party’s manifesto commitments on the NHS are ‘not fit for the future’. The claim was made off the back of the group conducting detailed analysis of the manifesto.

Keep Our NHS Public has also said that its campaigners – who include NHS staff and health policy experts – believe that the crisis in the NHS means the incoming government should declare a ‘national health emergency’ to release emergency measures proportionate to the severity of loss of life, health and livelihood that is currently occurring, and to build back the capacity of the NHS.

Keep Our NHS public says that the Labour Party manifesto is well short of what is required to address the crisis facing the health service. In the group’s critique, they say that Labour’s manifesto is insufficient in the following ways:

No commitment to invest the required funds in the public NHS after 14 years of austerity – every chance finances will be squeezed further
Insistence that government must prioritise thorough going NHS reforms over funding
No commitment to ending the wasteful and damaging investment in the private sector invited into the NHS body and parasitising it
Insistence that there is ‘spare capacity’ in the private sector that can benefit the NHS and end waiting lists, when all the evidence shows exactly the reverse is true
No commitment to full pay restoration for NHS staff and a reliance on their agreeing to work overtime to reduce the NHS waiting lists
No commitment to ending the charging of undocumented people for healthcare
Keep Our NHS Public has produced a ‘Vision for a People’s NHS’ setting out what they believe is really needed to restore the NHS to its founding principles.

Dr Tony O’Sullivan, Co-Chair of Keep Our NHS Public and a retired Consultant Paediatrician, said: “After 14 years of rising pressures on the NHS and its staff and the damage done, it will take emergency measures to urgently restore the NHS to a safe, strong service. The government is almost certainly going to be Labour. If Labour stands by its manifesto, refuses to give the NHS the funds it needs to address waiting times and unmet need, and fulfils its threat to fund the private sector, it will be furthering the downward spiral of the NHS as a public service unable to meet the needs of the population. It is simply not true that Labour’s plans are ‘in line with the principles of the NHS that Labour founded’.”

[Admin]

Opinion The Bottom Line
Partha Kar: Will the 10 year plan herald another false dawn or bring genuine change?
BMJ 2024; 387 doi: doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q2350 (Published 25 October 2024)
Cite this as: BMJ 2024;387:q2350

www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj.q2350

The time has come for another 10 year plan for the NHS.1 A new government is in place, with new ambitions for our health service. In his recent review Ara Darzi told us what is, and isn’t, working in the NHS right now.2

All current NHS staff will be aware of the problems, including insufficient work on illness prevention, resistance to modernisation, collapsing facilities, and “productivity,” or rather a lack of it. These challenges need investment, redistribution of funds, and more consistent care. Although Darzi’s report has generated some scepticism, it has also excited the usual suspects: think tanks and individuals keen to work on a new NHS plan.

The NHS’s problems are manifold, including the 10 year plan itself. In the past decade we’ve had the five year forward view in 2014 and the NHS long term plan in 2019.34 Given the present situation, it clearly does need a plan—but we must look at the promises made in previous ones to see what’s been delivered, analyse the successes, and learn from them. It’s vital that any new plan doesn’t make unrealistic or unfunded promises to the population about what the NHS can achieve.

We need open and transparent discussion around the lack of delivery of previous plans, not just another plan without analysis of previous failures. We need to discuss the fascination with metrics—reflected in NHS leadership—and the view that simply increasing access to NHS services will improve outcomes. The “primary care access” strategy5 is a fine example of this: access numbers are key to the strategy, not the quality of care the patients receive or the training of those providing it.

In a safety critical industry such as healthcare, declining quality and efficiency is a problem. We can’t talk on the one hand about a lack of productivity while on the other hand saddling the system with more professionals who have less medical training, thereby making the whole system inefficient.

Public patience
We should also consider whether the architects of previous plans, which haven’t delivered on their aims, should be involved in yet another plan. The clichéd offering of “another fresh start” is all too familiar and ends up feeling like Groundhog Day. The health secretary, Wes Streeting, and his team need to realise that the NHS will be the political weapon used against him in a few years, and there’s only so long you can keep blaming others for its failings. The public has patience, but there’s a limit.

The wider issue is that for some people in the NHS, creating documents, plans, and awareness about improving population health is their livelihood. In my experience, NHS leadership is mostly built on a clique philosophy that keeps the circle tight and shuts out outsiders as much as possible. This culture enables groupthink and echo chambers to convince us that all is well in the NHS, along with a narrative that the lack of delivery on previous plans was simply due to a lack of government funding.

To the discerning public, it’s inescapable that the NHS has continued to slide. It will be interesting to see where Streeting focuses his attention. Beyond his own personal ambitions and what he’d like to deliver for the NHS lies the health of millions of people who need to see improvement, after years of declining access and health outcomes. Will the new 10 year plan herald yet another false dawn, or will there be genuine change?

We have an opportunity to look at our health service with a fresh gaze and to make a difference. But as the saying goes, old wine in new bottles is still, unfortunately, old wine. Repackaging old ideas won’t succeed: we need real change in the NHS.

Footnotes
Competing interests: see www.bmj.com/about-bmj/freelance-contributors. Partha Kar is national specialty adviser, diabetes, and former lead of the Medical Workforce Race Equality Standard.

Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.

References
↵West D. New 10-year health plan due next spring. Health Serv J (published online 22 Jul). www.hsj.co.uk/integrated-care/new-10-year-health-plan-due-next-spring/7037515.article (Login needed)
↵Department of Health and Social Care. Independent investigation of the NHS in England. Updated 25 Sep 2024. www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-investigation-of-the-nhs-in-england
↵NHS England. Five year forward view. Oct 2014. www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/5yfv-web.pdf
↵NHS England. NHS Long Term Workforce Plan. Updated 22 Apr 2024. www.england.nhs.uk/publication/nhs-long-term-workforce-plan/
↵NHS England. Delivery plan for recovering access to primary care. Updated 24 Oct 2024. www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/delivery-plan-for-recovering-access-to-primary-care-2/

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NHS long term plan consultation: NSUN’s response and template for members
Posted on 24 October 2024
What is this consultation and how do I take part?
On Monday the 21st of October, the Department of Health and Social Care announced a ‘national conversation’ on the future of the NHS, calling on the public to submit their ideas for a so-called ‘overhaul’ of the service. Individuals, those who work in health and care, and organisations are invited to provide details of their experiences of NHS care and suggestions for its improvement via a new online platform, change.NHS.uk.

The ‘public engagement exercise’ – which the Department takes care to avoid calling a consultation – is focussed on three main themes, or ‘big shifts’. These are:

Moving more care from hospitals to communities
Making better use of technology in health and care
Focussing on preventing sickness, not just treating it
According to the announcement, the responses collected will inform the government’s 10 Year Health Plan, which will be published in Spring 2025. We don’t yet know if there are plans for a mental health-specific plan or strategy, since the new government has ‘paused’ work on the previous government’s Major Conditions Strategy, which included a mental health strand in place of the scrapped mental health and wellbeing plan.

We want to make sure that mental health is given the attention it needs in this plan, especially given the uncertainty around whether there will be a separate, mental health-specific plan. This is also timely given the context of the publication on Thursday 24th October 2024 of the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) investigation into inpatient mental health care, which outlines the ways in which people are harmed and re-traumatised within these settings.

How do submissions work?
Experiences, suggestions and ‘ideas for change’ can be shared via five surveys for members of the public, people who work in health and care, and organisations.

The main survey for members of the public, patients, carers or health and care workers asks general questions about which services respondents have engaged with, challenges and highlights of experiences with the NHS, and people’s perceptions of the three proposed ‘big shifts’. Respondents are also invited to choose which areas (‘challenges’) highlighted by the recent independent investigation of the NHS (the Darzi report) they have personal experience of, and then pick the three they think are most important for the 10 Year Health Plan to address.

Other surveys include ‘Your experiences: public’, where respondents can share recent, first or second-hand experiences of health and/or care services in a free text format, and ‘Ideas for change’, which asks for short, medium and long-term suggestions for the future of the NHS. ‘Your experiences: workforce’ and ‘Organisations’ asks for thoughts from those who work in health and care, and from organisations outside of this setting.

Your response
The themes around which the surveys are structured – and the prompts offered, which include ‘mental health’, ‘living with ill-health’ and ‘treatment’ in the ‘Ideas for change section’ amongst others – speak to various issues that NSUN and our members have worked on.

If you would like to submit a response on behalf of an organisation, you are welcome to adapt the answers we gave in our organisational response, below.
If you would like to submit a response as an individual, feel free to use our template answers to some of the questions, which you can find below (after the button to read our organisational response) and which focus only on mental health – you may wish to add to your answers with your views on other areas of health.
NSUN’s organisational response
NSUN has submitted an organisational response to this consultation, focussing on mental health. In particular, we raised issues such as:

Cultures of abuse, neglect, exclusion and coercion in the mental health system which are caused by more than just underfunding and understaffing
The implementation of harmful “innovations” such as high intensity schemes and technologies implementing surveillance systems
The need to solidify and strengthen planned reform of the Mental Health Act, acknowledging that it does not go far enough in addressing the scale of institutional and structural racism in the mental health system
The risk of harm to trans and non-binary patients caused by the move to ‘eradicate’ mixed-sex wards and remove or restrict access to other forms of care
The decimation of community care, including alternatives to statutory services and issues such as the abolition of the Care Planning Approach
The need for a health plan focussing on prevention to recognise the connection between mental health and policy-making, specifically around the issues that impact the social, material, and political conditions of peoples’ lives that drive distress

www.nsun.org.uk/news/nhs-long-term-plan-consultation-nsuns-response-and-template-for-members/

NSUN response to 10 Year Health Plan consultation

docs.google.com/document/d/1wemImUfvCTXGg-Z1IxWF38ud7k_5hkGj7d2UcU3DnA8/edit?tab=t.0

[Admin]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g4OQPhk5Bo