Norman Traub reports on local campaigning to defend the NHS.

At a public meeting organised by Southend Keep OUR NHS Public(KONP) on 2^nd February against cuts in services and privatisation of the NHS, the main speaker was Dr Kambiz Boomla, a prominent health campaigner. He placed the cuts in funding to the NHS, which will dramatically increase from 20011 within the wider context of the economic crisis and recession. He said the main political parties were committed to the cuts, New Labour to “kind and sensitive” cuts, the Liberal Democrats to “prudent” ones and the Tories to “savage” cuts.

In line with the cuts, specialist services will be centralised, many district hospitals transferring facilities to a handful of major acute hospitals and downgraded to local hospitals or becoming unviable. In London it is calculated that there will be £5 billion cuts by 2017, the Kings Fund puts the figure at between £20 billion and £40 billion. A leaked report by the management consultants, McKinsey estimates 137,000 job cuts in the NHS, that is 10% of the NHS workforce, a recruitment freeze on NHS staff, cuts in funding of GP practices of 13%, cuts in community care budgets of 28%, getting rid of senior consultants, GPs and nurses through early retirements and contracting NHS services out to the private sector.

I was the other speaker and dealt with the formation of KONP in 2005 as a response to New Labour reneging on its 1997 election manifesto to get rid of the internal market in healthcare. A branch of KONP was formed in Southend in 2006 following the Southend Hospital Trust applying for and becoming a Foundation Trust Hospital. It is no longer under the control of the Department of Health, competes with NHS trust and private hospitals for patients and is free to set its own pay scales, which this year is at a lower rate than the national scale.

The extension of the internal market in secondary care was followed by an assault on primary care by SE Essex Primary Care Trust(PCT) in 2008. Contracts for running GP practices were given to private companies and plans put in place for building Darzi style polyclinics. Another private company has been awarded a contract to run one of these polyclinics. However, the plans for building polyclinics have now had to be scaled down and put back as the PCT has to make savings of £77million in the next five years, because of the squeeze by government on NHS spending.

Both Dr Boomla and I stressed the importance of a real fightback against cuts and privatisation in the NHS and linking this with the resistance to cuts and pay freezes in the rest of the public sector.