CNJ COMMENT - We must unite and fight to save our cherished NHS

Published: 10 March, 2011

BIT by bit, stone by stone, the National Health Service – cherished, without any doubt by the British nation – is being dismantled.

It was created in the late-1940s as the world’s first free health service.

For the next 40 years it remained fairly intact, as conceived in those heady post-war years.

Then, around 1990, Mrs Thatcher introduced a free market element into the management of hospitals. 

The Royal Free was one of the first to fall victim to this.

Later, the unprincipled Tony Blair, helped by acolytes in the Labour leadership, pushed the NHS further downhill by creating the concept of a foundation hospital – a hospital substantially free from government control.

David Cameron promised to protect the NHS. But, it seems, every government major announcement sounds the next death knell of this great institution.

No matter how the Coalition tries to dress up its plan to allow GPs to determined the NHS budget for their area, the fact remains that it will further dismantle it.

Opposition has come from the British Medical Association and, even, a growing number of GPs.

But protests on paper will not stop the Cameron bulldozer.

For decades, NHS hospitals have been free to treat private patients.

Figures would show, we assume, that in the capital more revenue is generated by private patients than elsewhere.

Though the “private” part of London hospitals has not substantially grown in recent years the very philosophy now expounded by the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley will, we fear, expand it to an alarming degree.

One cannot draw this conclusion alone by the remarks of the Royal Free’s chairman, Dominic Dodd (see related article), but we are sure they reflect the views of senior management figures in other hospitals.

It is all part of the backward march of the NHS.

But the very nature of Lansley’s reforms are such that they are not easy to sum up in soundbites the public can be expected to readily understand.

The early mixed public reaction to them, particularly the idea to turn GPs into NHS “money men”, illustrates this.

But the danger signals are all around us.

Surely, the public will not allow the NHS to die. For die it will, if the present Coalition has its way.

The broadest alliance of defiance needs to be built.

Differences of opinion should be put aside to save the NHS.