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.
Feature image via EveryDoctor
