Andrew George MP backs the NHS Bill

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Andrew George, the Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives, has been a key supporter of the NHS Reinstatement Bill.

On 11th March 2015, Andrew George MP and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas co-sponsored the National Health Service Bill – the NHS Bill – when it was tabled in the House of Commons. The NHS Bill was based on the second version of the NHS Reinstatement Bill.

“There are many risks which need to be dealt with. The public sector ethos of the NHS is at risk. The current dynamics and structures within the NHS means that the risk of fragmentation has been heightened. The private sector is camped on the front lawn of core NHS services, preying on the NHS and cherry picking its easiest and most profitable services.

“The last thing the NHS needs now is yet another top down reorganisation. The NHS Reinstatement Bill provides a good basis for a better direction of travel for the NHS.”

Andrew George MP, 11 March 2015

3 - Student nurses with Andrew George Caroline Lucas and Peter Roderick

Andrew George MP, alongside Caroline Lucas MP, and barrister Peter Roderick (co-author of the NHS Reinstatement Bill), talking to student nurses on the day the NHS Bill was presented to parliament.

 

You can support the campaign by asking your MP and prospective parliamentary candidates whether they would back an NHS Reinstatement Bill to be in the next Queen’s Speech.

Take action here.

Press release 10/03/15 – Reinstatement Bill published by Parliament

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Press release
Tuesday 10 March

Here is the tool now start the job: NHS Reinstatement Bill before Parliament

Parliament will be handed a way to save the NHS from massive break-up and eventual collapse tomorrow (11 March) as the NHS Reinstatement Bill 2015 is laid before it by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, with cross-party support from 11 more MPs. And to mark the occasion, NHS campaigning groups will be assembling outside Parliament on College Green, Westminster, at 11.30 am. Noting what could be the start of restoring the NHS back to its founding principles, and stopping the process of breaking apart and handing over of services to private healthcare organisations – which current legislation has guaranteed.

The NHS Reinstatement Bill, drafted by Professor Allyson Pollock and barrister Peter Roderick, is unique amongst proposals for changes to the law governing the NHS in having no party affiliation: it is non-partisan. It frames a clear mechanism to protect the NHS against the damage of privatisation, in overturning key aspects of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and earlier legislation that set the NHS in England on the road to fragmentation – often without public consultation, and nearly always without their full awareness.

Far from being yet another ‘top-down, centralised, re-structuring’, crucially it hands responsibility for provision of service back to the Secretary of State for Health, something the HSCA severed – thereby effectively uncoupling ultimate responsibility for the NHS from Parliament. It also spells out how, if the NHS is to be saved, it must:

  • Reinstate the government’s legal duty to provide key NHS services in England.
  • Abolish market structures like foundation trusts [1].
  • Abolish competition and contracts [2].
  • Centralise PFI debt to protect individual trusts from its impact.
  • Stop immigration health charges [3].
  • Stop treaties like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) [4]without Parliament’s approval if they cover the NHS.
  • Establish area Health Boards from the bottom up.
  • Re-establish Community Health Councils for public accountability.
  • Require national terms and conditions under the NHS Staff Council and Agenda for Change system [5].

 

MP Caroline Lucas said:

‘Our NHS is being dismantled piece by piece. A fragmented, market-based structure isn’t the “national” service that so many people fought for so courageously.

‘It mustn’t be reduced to a set of transactions, contracts and bidding wars that hollow it into little more than a logo – and waste resources that could be spent on front-line patient care.’

Professor Allyson Pollock:

‘One of the things we want to ensure is that there is no horse-trading when it comes to the reinstatement of the NHS. Without the restoration of the duty to provide core-listed services, which the Health and Social Care Act removed from the Secretary of State, we will continue to see the NHS wither away.

 ‘We will then see a race to the bottom: the blurring of health and social care, more introduction of charges, and marketization.

 ‘So that’s why we’ve been working so hard on the NHS Reinstatement Bill. We’re been trying to get cross-party support and we have it.

‘What we need people to do is to get involved in the campaign to get prospective parliamentary candidates to sign up to the legislation so that if there’s a hung parliament and if deals are being done they know that the NHS cannot be part of the horse-trading, it is absolutely sacrosanct. I hope everyone will support the Reinstatement Bill and what we are trying to do around it.’

 The Bill has support from across the political spectrum. The MPs who have signed up to it so far are:

Caroline Lucas
Andrew George
John Pugh
Michael Meacher
Chris Williamson
Roger Godsiff
Kelvin Hopkins
Jeremy Corbyn
John McDonnell
Eilidh Whiteford
Hywell Williams
Katy Clark

(Parliamentary procedure limits the number of MPs who can support tabling a Bill before Parliament to 12.)

Editors’ Notes

The Campaign for the NHS Reinstatement Bill is a non-partisan campaign and has a wide range of support across the political spectrum (http://www.nhsbill2015.org/our-supporters/ ). It encourages the public to contact prospective parliamentary candidates in their constituency, determine their views on the Reinstatement Bill, and gain their support for it wherever possible:

http://www.nhsbill2015.org

@nhsbill2015

The Campaign’s press officer is Alan Taman:

07870 757 309

healthjournos@gmail.com

http://www.nhsbill2015.org/press-contact

[1] The belief that ‘competition is always best’ does not work when applied to healthcare. A comprehensive and universal health service is best funded by public donation, which has been shown to be far more efficient overall than private-insurance healthcare models. [Lister, J. (2013) Health Policy Reform: global health versus private profit. Libri: Faringdon.

[2] The NHS has always used private firms, partnerships and individual traders to provide services it could not easily or as cost-effectively provide for itself, eg some legal services and construction of or repair to NHS buildings. What the NHS Reinstatement Bill does is end the current obligation on NHS services to use tendering to determine which organisation delivers front-line healthcare: this is pro-privatisation engineering and is an ongoing threat to the comprehensiveness of NHS care.

[3] The Immigration Act proposes to discriminate against immigrants by charging them for NHS treatment.

[4] The TTIP, if enacted as it stands currently, would make it very difficult for future governments to reverse the provision of healthcare by private organisations if they could show this would prove commercially damaging to them [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership ].

[5] The Bill would ensure that any handover of employment for NHS staff from NHS FTs, CCGs and NHS trusts to the new NHS bodies was conducted with the full participation of Trade Unions and would require the Secretary of State for Health to make regulations setting out the terms and conditions of transfer.

 

Photo-op: 11.30am, College Green, Wed 11 March

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The NHS Reinstatement Bill – named in parliament the NHS Bill – will be presented by Caroline Lucas in the House of Commons on Wednesday 11 March. It will be co-sponsored by a cross party group of up to 12 MPs – including Liberal Democrat Andrew George, Labour’s Michael Meacher, SNP’s Stewart Hosie and Plaid Cymru’s Hywel Williams.

To mark this milestone, we will have a photo opportunity with any campaign groups who would like to come along at 11.30am on College Green, near the House of Commons. Everyone is welcome. Bring your banners. We hope that Caroline Lucas MP, Andrew George MP and some of the other supporting MPs will be able to join us.

 

What does ‘presenting’ the Bill mean?

It is a mechanism to publish the Bill formally in the House of Commons. Caroline Lucas will be asked who is introducing the Bill, read out the names of the other MPs, and will then walk three steps down the middle of the Commons, bow, take three more steps, bow again, and will then hand the Bill in at the table.  It will be read out by the clerk and will then be formally listed as one of this year’s bills.  Notionally Caroline Lucas will name a day for the Second Reading debate, although at this stage in the parliamentary cycle this will not happen before the General Election.

The full text of the Bill should be published shortly after, hopefully on Thursday 12th March. The published Bill will have a very small number of changes to the second version of the Bill we have prepared, and it should then be available on Parliament’s website.

Why is this important?

Whilst there is no parliamentary time to take the Bill any further in this parliament, this is an important milestone in showing cross-party support, and enabling other MPs to see the full text of the Bill.

Why now?

The NHS Reinstatement Bill was drafted in August 2014 by Professor Allyson Pollock and barrister Peter Roderick. There was a consultation period that finished in December 2014. Based on the consultation responses received, we published a second version of the Bill in February 2015. It is this second version, with a small number of changes, that will become ‘The NHS Bill’ as presented in parliament.

What next?

The aim of our campaign has always been to for people to ask their MP and parliamentary candidates to state their support for an NHS Reinstatement Bill to be included in the Queen’s Speech after the General Election.

You can help.

Take action – write to your MP and candidates today.

Presentation of the NHS Reinstatement Bill in Parliament

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We hope and expect the the NHS Reinstatement Bill to be presented to the House of Commons on Wednesday 11th March by Caroline Lucas of the Green Party supported by MPs from the Liberal Democracts, Labour, the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

It’s a formal process accompanied by publication of the long title of the Bill, and there will be no debate on the day. If there’s to be a debate on it before Parliament shuts down for the General Election at the end of March, we’ll let you know.

We hope the Bill will be published on 12th March with a very small number of changes to the second version of the Bill we have prepared, and it should then be available on Parliament’s website.

What will happen on the day?

On the 11th March the NHS Reinstatement Bill – which in Parliament will be called ‘The NHS Bill‘ – will get its First Reading. There is a formal ceremony where Caroline Lucas will be asked who is introducing the Bill,  read out the names of the other MPs, and will then walk three steps down the middle of the Commons, bow, take three more steps, bow again, and will then hand the Bill in at the table.  It will be read out by the clerk and will then be formally listed as one of this years bills.  Notionally Caroline Lucas will name a day for the Second Reading debate, although at this stage in the parliamentary cycle this will not happen before the General Election.

What next?

Whilst is a good step forward to present the Bill, we need it to be properly debated in Parliament. To achieve this, we need more MPs and candidates to state their support for an NHS Reinstatement Bill to be included in the Queen’s Speech after the General Election.

Take action – write to your MP and candidates today.

 

Dave Anderson MP supports the proposed NHS Reinstatement Bill

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Dave Anderson, Labour MP for Blaydon is backing the proposed NHS Reinstatement Bill.

“I would absolutely support an NHS Reinstatement Bill in the next parliament, and I’m delighted to tell you that Labour will repeal the Health and Social Care Act on being elected. I was formally the President of Unison the biggest trade union in health and proud that we always opposed the private sector leeching off our NHS and I will support moves to safeguard the service in public hands”.

Dave Anderson MP, March 2015

Does your MP support the NHS Reinstatement Bill? Ask them now.

Find out more about the NHS Reinstatement Bill.

Press release 05/03/15 – Manchester leads but can others follow?

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Press release
Thursday 5 March

Manchester leads but can others follow? The best way forward for the NHS means changing the law

Ten Local authorities in Greater Manchester are to jointly commission health and social care services with the 12 CCGs in the area, with a current value of around 6 billion pounds in 2016 [1] in a move towards integration and local accountability for health and social care services. But the question is, how will the NHS be protected in the absence of a clear legislative framework and statutory duty to provide listed services throughout England? A leading campaigner to change the law on how the NHS is defined and works will be speaking in Manchester this week, pointing out that the law needs to change if the NHS is to be protected. And asking people to back the NHS Reinstatement Bill [2] in Parliament by approaching their MPs and electoral candidates up to the election.

Local authorities currently contract out most of their social services and residential and nursing care to private for profit providers of nursing care which are charged for and means-tested at point of use. Nationally, there has been a major reduction in LA budgets resulting in reduced levels of service provision and entitlement to care added to pressures on the NHS.

The amount spent on social care services for older people has fallen nationally by £1.1 billion (14.4%) since 2010/11, even after accounting for additional funding from the NHS, and by a total of £1.4 billion (17.7%) since 2005/6:

  • 3% of all people aged 65 and over (1,230,625) received social care in 2005/06 compared to 9.1% (849,280) in 2014/15 – a reduction of 40%.
  • Between 2010/11 and 2013/14:
    • Older people receiving home care has fallen by 31.7% (542,965 to 370,630)
    • Day care places have plummeted by 66.9% (178,700 to 59,125)
    • Spending on home care has dropped since 2010/11 by 19.4% (£276,922,528) falling from £2,250,168,237 to £1,814,518,000
    • Spending on day care has fallen even more dramatically by 30% (£113,618,974) from £378,532,974 to £264,914,000

The real concern is that if funding is not restored alongside a strong legislative framework to ensure that the NHS continues to be provided throughout England as a planned National Health Service, the commissioning board will use cost shifting and marketization to break up the NHS and decrease access to NHS funded care by blurring the boundaries between what is free healthcare and what is charged for.

It is a crucial moment for local authorities to engage in local health services but legislation is required to ensure that the resources and services are distributed fairly and on the basis of need throughout England. The proposed NHS Reinstatement Bill [2] due to be tabled in in Parliament on 11 March will do this; and now it is crucial that everyone lobbies their MPs and electoral candidates to support it before and after the election.

Professor Allyson Pollock will be speaking at the Mechanics Institute, Princess Street, Manchester, on Thursday 5 March at a meeting organised by CLASS on the future of the NHS [3]. She will be talking about what the new Bill means, and why we need it now more than ever. Professor Pollock has helped draft the new Bill with lawyer Peter Roderick, and it is attracting increasing support from across the political spectrum.

The NHS Reinstatement Bill 2015 is due to be tabled before Parliament on 11 March. It will restore the NHS to its proper place and prevent further damage to the NHS by:

  • Reinstating the government’s legal duty to provide key NHS services in England.
  • Abolishing market structures like foundation trusts.
  • Abolishing competition and contracts.
  • Allowing commercial companies to provide services only if the NHS could not do so and patients would suffer.
  • Centralising PFI debts so they can be reduced.
  • Stopping immigration health charges.
  • Stopping treaties like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) without Parliament’s approval if they cover the NHS.
  • Establishing local Health Boards from the bottom up.
  • Re-establishing Community Health Councils for public accountability.
  • Requiring national terms and conditions under the NHS Staff Council and Agenda for Change system.

Professor Pollock said:

‘The NHS is withering away because the duty on the Sec of State to provide has been abolished. This NHS Reinstatement Bill is needed to restore the duty to provide a national health service throughout England and make services accountable to local people again. The current break-up of services and their fragmentation and marketization and erosion of entitlements has only be made possible by the Health and Social Care Act of 2012. The current trajectory is to increase the blurring of boundaries between services that are free and those that are paid for in the marketplace – with market providers making those decisions about the winners and the losers.

‘Support this Bill. Write to your electoral candidates and MPs. We are many – but time is short.’

Editors’ Notes

Venue details:

Election 2015: Manchester – What’s at stake for the NHS?

The Mechanics Institute, 103 Princess Street
Manchester M1 6DD

Thursday 5 March 2015, 6:30pm.

Details/book:

http://classonline.org.uk/events/item/election-2015-manchester-whats-at-stake-for-the-nhs

Contact:

The Campaign’s press officer is Alan Taman:

07870 757 309

healthjournos@gmail.com

http://www.nhsbill2015.org/press-contact

 

[1] Widely reported and since commented on. See http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/25/greater-manchester-councils-to-control-6bn-of-health-spending-report

[2] www.nhsbill2015.org.uk . The Campaign for the NHS Reinstatement Bill is a non-partisan campaign and has a wide range of support across the political spectrum (http://www.nhsbill2015.org/our-supporters/ ). It encourages the public to contact prospective parliamentary candidates in their constituency, determine their views on the Reinstatement Bill, and gain their support for it wherever possible:

http://www.nhsbill2015.org

Twitter: @nhsbill2015

[3] The Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS) is a think-tank established in 2012 to look at key social issues from a left perspective: http://classonline.org.uk

 

 

 

NHS Reinstatement Bill – new version published

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The story so far

The NHS was set up by a law – the NHS Act 1946. Since then, there have been dozens of Acts affecting it – especially over the last 25 years or so.

The most radical of these laws was the Health and Social Care Act 2012, because it abolished the legal duty on the government to provide key NHS services in England, and took marketisation to a new level.

We need a law to reinstate that legal duty, to stop marketisation, and to re-establish public bodies. Without a law, the process now rapidly underway will continue.

This is why Peter Roderick and Professor Allyson Pollock drafted a NHS Reinstatement Bill in August 2014. This Bill was put out for consultation, and dozens of responses from individuals and organisations were received. The consultation on the proposed NHS Reinstatement Bill ended in December 2014.
 

NHS Reinstatement Bill – February 2015

NHS Reinstatement BillPeter Roderick and Allyson Pollock have since drafted a new version of the Bill, finalised on 21 February 2015.

The new version of the NHS Reinstatement Bill is available here.

The explanatory notes are available here.

The comparison between the previous and current version of the Bill is available here.
 

 

Brief summary of the NHS Reinstatement Bill, February 2015

In short, the Bill proposes to fully restore the NHS as an accountable public service by reversing 25 years of marketization in the NHS, by abolishing the purchaser-provider split, ending contracting and re-establishing public bodies and public services accountable to local communities.

This is necessary to stop the dismantling of the NHS under the Health and Social Care Act 2012. It is driven by the needs of local communities. Scotland and Wales have already reversed marketization and restored their NHS without massive upheaval. England can too.

The Bill gives flexibility in how it would be implemented, led by local authorities and current bodies.

It would:

  • reinstate the government’s duty to provide the key NHS services throughout England, including hospitals, medical and nursing services, primary care, mental health and community services,
  • integrate health and social care services,
  • declare the NHS to be a “non-economic service of general interest”, asserting the full competence of Parliament and the devolved bodies to legislate for the NHS,
  • abolish the NHS Commissioning Board (NHS England) and re-establish it as a Special Health Authority with regional committees,
  • plan and provide services without contracts through Health Boards, which could cover more than one local authority area if there was local support,
  • allow local authorities to lead a ‘bottom up’ process with the assistance of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts and NHS England to transfer functions to Health Boards,
  • abolish NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts and CCGs after the transfer by 1st January 2018,
  • abolish Monitor – the regulator of NHS foundation trusts, commercial companies and voluntary organisations – and repeal the competition and core marketization provisions of the 2012 Act,
  • integrate public health services, and the duty to reduce inequalities, into the NHS,
  • re-establish Community Health Councils to represent the interest of the public in the NHS,
  • stop licence conditions taking effect which have been imposed by Monitor on NHS foundation trusts and that will have the effect of reducing by April 2016 the number of services that they currently have to provide,
  • require national terms and conditions under the NHS Staff Council and Agenda for Change system for relevant NHS staff,
  • centralise NHS debts under the Private Finance Initiative in the Treasury, and require the Treasury to report to Parliament on reducing them,
  • abolish the legal provisions passed in 2014 requiring certain immigrants to pay for NHS services
  • prohibit ratification of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and other international treaties without the approval of Parliament and the devolved legislatures if they would cover the NHS,
  • require the government to report annually to Parliament on the effect of treaties on the NHS.

Further and consequential amendments would also be necessary and these would be contained in a simultaneous NHS (Consequential Provisions) Act.
 

Take Action

We need MPs in the next session of parliament to commit to backing an NHS Reinstatement Bill.

Please help by contacting your MP and prospective parliamentary candidates in the run up to the election on May 7, asking them to state their support for an NHS Reinstatement Bill.

Please let us know their response, by emailing <info@nhsbill2015.org>.

You can see whether your MP and candidates have already replied here.

New NHS Reinstatement Bill campaign leaflet

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Setting up a stall? Holding a hustings? Persuading the public? If so, we now have the leaflet that you need.

Available for free, as long as you’ll put them to good use.

It’s A5 size, and intended as a way to let people know about the campaign, and how they can take action.

To order a bundle, just email <info@nhsbill2015.org> letting us know your address and how many leaflets you’d like.

Leaflet image

 

 

999 Call for the NHS backs the campaign

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Jo Adams Trafalgar SquareWe are really pleased to announce that 999 Call for the NHS are backing the Campaign for the NHS Reinstatement Bill.

The 999 Call for NHS is the people’s campaign for the NHS, inspired by a group of local mums from Darlington.

“The 999 Team are pleased to support and contribute to any bill that seeks to remove private health firms from the heart of our NHS. We want to see the Health Service completely renationalised and an end to the fragmentation and deconstruction of comprehensive healthcare. We welcome any bill that clearly aims to support this vital position.”

Joanna Adams, founder of 999 Call for the NHS

 

999 Call for the NHS are organising a convention for all NHS campaigners on Saturday 28th February in London.  Peter Roderick, lawyer and co-author of the NHS Reinstatement Bill will be speaking, and Alan Taman from the campaign will outline how you can help put pressure on politicians. Book your free place today.

 999 Call for the NHS Convention

 

See the full list of supporters of the Campaign for an NHS Reinstatement Bill 2015.

Please help support the campaign by asking your prospective parliamentary candidates to back an NHS Reinstatement Bill.

999 Call for the NHS – Convention for the NHS

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London, Saturday February 28th – 999 Call for the NHS are organising a convention to bring together an alliance of NHS campaigners. Everyone is welcome.

There will be a wide range of NHS campaigners speaking at the event, and a chance for you to network and plan your own campaigns.

One of the speakers will be lawyer Peter Roderick, co-author of the NHS Reinstatement Bill.

Health journalist and Campaign for the NHS Reinstatement Bill press officer Alan Taman will also be speaking about what action you can take to support the NHS Reinstatement Bill, and about the role of the media. 

This will be your chance to hear why we need an NHS Reinstatement Bill, what the content of the Bill is, and how you can help campaign to make it reality.

The event is free – but you do need to register. Go to the 999 Call for the NHS to book your place today.

999 Call for the NHS Convention