CNJ COMMENT - Safe to say, hospital is being handed to private sector

Published: 7 April, 2011

PIECE by piece, one of our foremost NHS institutions is being dismantled.

The Royal Free Hospital has announced the loss of 450 posts.

About one tenth of the workforce – nurses, porters, doctors and managers who make the place tick – will fall victim to a budget cut this year of £40million. More are expected to follow next year.

But it is not just the morale-sapping loss of these hard-working and principled staff that is cause for concern. 

There is intense pressure to balance the books to achieve independently run Foundation Trust status. With funding dry­ing up, hospital bosses have already confirmed they will use new freedoms and open the floodgates to private patients.

Changes introduced by the previous Labour government saw an expert team of physiotherapists at the Free was “outsourced” to a private provider in 2009. 

Some NHS treatments are already considered “optional” and are no longer available for free. Services such as emergency stroke care have been moved away never to return. Where will this end? 

The Royal Free chief executive believes “quality” will not be affected. 

But, for many, it is quantity, not quality, that is the important factor. What use is quality when little remains?

“The NHS is safe in our hands,” claimed David Cameron, shortly before the 2010 general election.

It will only last as long as there are people prepared to stand up for it. The only hands it is safe in are our own.

Doubts over Ripper killing

NINE years after three women died at the hands of a murderer in Camden Town, there remains a feeling that everything has not been explained in full. 

The pathologist who ruled one of the women Anthony Hardy killed had died from natural causes has been suspended for four months for failing to meet the standards expected of him. Whatever is thought of the penalty, his role in the case has now been scrutinised in public. 

Yet other lingering laments about the case have never been afforded the same scrutiny. Inquiries held behind closed doors have left relatives of one of the victims, at least, with a haunting feeling that missed opportunities to stop a killer have never been squarely explained. For what was one of Camden’s most horrific criminal cases, no stone should have been left unturned in answering their questions.

As things stand, with the case falling deeper into the history books, the picture remains patchy. The repeated calls for a public inquiry were not frivolous. 

It was a certain shame they were ignored.