Keep Our NHS Public
See Keep Our NHS Public's April 2007 Statement on the NHS.
Keep Our NHS Public was launched in October 2005. Founding organisations included the NHS Support Federation, the NHS Consultants' Association and Health Emergency. Early signatories included Dave Prentis, Claire Rayner, Dr Elizabeth Barrett, John Bird, John Fortune, Sir Iain Chalmers, Margaret Cook, Frank Dobson MP, Ian Gibson MP, Baroness Helena Kennedy, Stephen Fry, Evan Harris MP, Nick Hornby, Professor Brian Jarman, Dr Lynne Jones MP, Professor Harry Keen, Professor Colin Leys, John Lipetz, Sir Sandy Macara, Michael Meacher MP, Professor David Metcalfe, George Monbiot, Andrew Motion, Colette O'Neil, Mark Serwotka, Philip Pullman, Jancis Robinson, Professor Wendy Savage, Claire Short MP, and many others. Further support has been given by pensioners' associations, unions (both nationally and at branch level), the Junior Doctors' Committee of the British Medical Association, the TUC and many others, both groups and individuals. Support for the campaign continues to grow as the consequences of the government's privatisation policies become ever clearer.
The national campaign now has a growing number of local affiliate groups. You can find details of these by clicking on the various regions of the map.
The local groups currently include:
Leicester, Leicestershire & Rutland
Northampton
Robin Hood
Cambridge
Greenwich
Hackney
SW London
Tower Hamlets
Waltham Forest
Newcastle
Maghull
Manchester
Merseyside
Brighton
Crawley
Kent
Oxfordshire
Southampton
Southend
Bristol
Cornwall
Merthyr Tydfil
North Staffs
Walsall
Warwickshire
Sheffield
Website: http://www.keepournhspublic.com/
Launch statement
The NHS stands at a crossroads. For nearly 60 years Britain has enjoyed a National Health Service that strives to be comprehensive, accessible and high value for money. Now, government reforms threaten both the ethos of the NHS, and the planned and equitable way in which it delivers care to patients.At the heart of the changes is the creation of a market that welcomes profit-driven international corporations who answer to shareholders, not patients. This market will compel hospitals and health professionals, who have traditionally cooperated to deliver healthcare, to compete with each other and with the private sector. Far from supporting the NHS, the private sector is in competition with it, and is already draining away resources and staff.
If these reforms continue the nature of the health system will change radically:
- Income and profits will increasingly come before patient needs and clinical considerations.
- Greater inequalities in healthcare will appear, as profitable services and patients attract money at the expense of unprofitable ones.
- Forced market competition among NHS hospitals and primary care will break up the NHS as a network of collaborating bodies that share resources and information. Our integrated NHS GP service will be lost. There will be winners and losers, with some units and even entire hospitals having to close. We are already seeing job losses and bed closures in NHS hospitals.
- Even more of the new money allocated to health will be diverted to shareholders and company profits, and wasted on the huge administrative costs associated with establishing and running a market.
The situation is grave. The value of the NHS is immense and cannot be mirrored by the private sector. It must be kept in public hands, serving the interests of all patients and the broader public, not the private healthcare industry.
We therefore call on organisations, healthcare workers, patients and the public to campaign to protect the NHS from further privatisation and fragmentation, and to keep our NHS public.