Whittington
Submitted by Highbury on Sat, 2010-02-13 12:14.13th February 2010
Dear Trib,
Re: Whittington
In 1983 Margaret Thatcher famously declared: "The National Health Service is safe in our hands." At the time this may have been true. No Labour politician has been able to say the same since they came to power; at least not without appearing either mendacious or ignorant or both.
Why is this?
Very simply because the UK has signed up to the Washington Consensus, GATT and World Trade Organisation objectives of hiving off our public services to private providers via outside tendering. This is known as Liberalisation, Reform and Globalisation. These principles are now enshrined in our Law under the Lisbon Treaty which forces public services to be open to private tender.
Does this matter?
I believe it does and the possibility of losing our A&E at the Whittington demonstrates why it matters. The North West London Commissioning Partnership proclaims “We will enable the PCTs to improve significantly the World Class Commissioning competencies related to acute commissioning to improve healthcare for patients in North West London.” In a nutshell our health services will be driven by the needs of ‘commissioning’ or ‘outsourcing’ rather than providing the health services we, the people, need, desire and pay for.
In the long run our public services are all going to be organised to suit the needs of private providers. Inevitably, policy will be increasingly shaped by private companies and corporations rather by us the users. I don’t know how long this process will take to complete but anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying through their teeth or naive in the extreme.
Finally let me thank the staff at the Whittington A&E who looked after me so well a little while back. I urge all the thousands of others who have been looked after to do what they can to defend their services and their Hospital.