17.10.1996

Organise for health

The main parties were again vying with each other as the best ‘defenders’ of the national health service this week after it was revealed that Hillingdon hospital in West London is turning away emergency patients aged over 75.

Doctors in the north of the hospital’s catchment area have been told not to refer such patients. Philip Brown, chief executive of the trust, said in an effort to appear a little less inhuman: “If somebody arrives at our door, we are certainly not going to turn them away.”

Health secretary Stephen Dorrell, in a nauseating display of hypocrisy, said that patients could be referred to the nearby Mount Vernon hospital - whose accident and emergency unit has already been closed down owing to government financial policy, leaving only a minor injuries unit.

John Lister of London Health Emergency told me:

“This has opened a completely new chapter. The previous heavy cuts had all focused on non-emergency services, but this signals the complete failure of the government’s entire strategy, which is supposed to be GP-led.”

The Liberal Democrats estimated earlier this week that the total shortfall of all the health authorities was likely to exceed £150 million this year. Paddy Ashdown, not renowned for defending workers’ rights, said: “There is no strategic basis for these closures ... It is a random process, as one trust after another responds not to patient needs, but to financial crisis.” But his ‘solution’ is to make workers pay for the profiteers through higher taxation.

At last week’s Conservative Party conference, John Major pledged to increase NHS spending “year on year” over and above inflation. Hardly convincing, as he refuses to give a penny more now. Meanwhile, Tony Blair said that £100 million could be saved by cutting health service bureaucracy. However, a Unison union rep told me: “That is not even enough for one hospital. The cost of building Walsgrave here in Coventry is £170 million.”

Allan Warby, Unison secretary of Camden and Islington Community Health branch in London, said:

“Personally I distrust all of them. None of them want to provide the service we need. Often there are hidden cuts, but here we are about to ballot for strike action against the 0.5% pay ‘offer’ for this year.”

All the capitalist parties place profit before the needs of patients and healthworkers.

We will only get the health service we need when we organise against the system which itself values money above people.

Peter Manson