{"id":8071,"date":"2016-03-10T15:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T15:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=8071"},"modified":"2016-03-10T15:00:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T15:00:25","slug":"make-nhs-accountable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=8071","title":{"rendered":"Make NHS accountable"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Unite members together with other campaigners will hand in a mass petition to the department of health tomorrow (March 11) supporting a parliamentary Bill restoring public accountability to the NHS.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Nearly 22,000 have signed the petition ahead of a rally opposite Parliament urging support for the National Health Service Bill 2015-2016 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which MPs will debate tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The union \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which has 100,000 members in the health service \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is angry at the continual erosion of public service ethos of the NHS as a result of the Tory-led government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s health and social care Act in 2012.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This has led to increasing privatisation of the health service, benefitting only profit-hungry private healthcare companies.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Bill \u00e2\u20ac\u201c proposed by Green MP Caroline Lucas, with strong Labour support \u00e2\u20ac\u201c aims to roll back the tide of privatisation and reinstate the secretary of state\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s legal responsibility for the health of UK citizens.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Bill would also abolish NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts and clinical commissioning groups.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Labour pledged to repeal the health and social care Act in its general election manifesto last year. Now the proposed legislation has received the backing of\u00c2\u00a0Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn and others along with SNP and Lib Dem MPs.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Saving the NHS<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Unite national officer for health Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe are coming down to the wire when it comes to saving the NHS from being hived off to rapacious private healthcare companies.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bNow is the time for MPs to step up to the plate to reverse the detrimental changes of recent years and restore the NHS to its 1948 founding principles.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bFor more than 25 years the NHS has been gradually undermined as a public service, with laws brought in to allow more and more of it to be outsourced to the private sector,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Jarrett-Thorpe added.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This culminated in the 2012 Act which saw the break-up of national needs-based patient care in England and replaced it with a competitive market model where groups of GPs in clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are obliged to put health services out to tender.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis Act &#8211; probably one of the worst that MPs have approved in recent decades &#8211; has enabled billions of pounds to be siphoned off that should have been spent on frontline care.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Down the drain<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt has gone to fund this flawed and misguided concept of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0098market\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. To put it crudely, millions have gone down the drain.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis neo-liberal ideology of \u00e2\u20ac\u0098profits before patients\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 must be stopped before the NHS based on each person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s need free at the point of delivery disappears for ever,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Jarrett-Thorpe added.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite members will help hand in the petition at the\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk\/+\/www.dh.gov.uk\/en\/ContactUs\/OfficeLocations\/DH_4026039\">department of health, Richmond House, 79 Whitehall, London, SW1A 2NS<\/a> at 09.45 tomorrow before a rally <a href=\"x-apple-data-detectors:\/\/4\/\">at 11.00<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0to publicise the NHS bill.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Sign the petition <a href=\"https:\/\/you.38degrees.org.uk\/petitions\/support-the-nhs-reinstatement-bill-to-bring-back-our-nhs\">here<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unite members together with other campaigners will hand in a mass petition to the department of health tomorrow (March 11) supporting a parliamentary Bill restoring public accountability to the NHS. &nbsp; Nearly 22,000 have signed the petition ahead of a rally opposite Parliament urging support for the National Health Service Bill 2015-2016 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which MPs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":257,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[29],"wps_subtitle":"Strong backing for anti-privatisation Bill","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8071"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8075,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8071\/revisions\/8075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}