Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS


10:50 am - May 22nd 2012

by Éoin Clarke    


Tweet       Share on Tumblr

1. Submit a freedom of information request. You’ll receive an answer within 20 working days and if you ask the right questions you could transform supporters of the NHS’s ability to fight Lansley’s privatisation. I use “whatdotheyknow” for my queries as they are the most user friendly way of submitting a query. You can also browse the other types of queries asked there to give yourself ideas about how to word yours.

2. Choose a NHS provider, not a private one when you get your choice of operation. Under Labour legislation you have the right to insist that you are given the choice of opting to be treated by the NHS. So, if your operation or consultation letter arrives with no NHS choice, you can insist on being given one. This will keep demand/custom within the National Health Serivce and make it harder for Lansley to justify flogging it.

3. Join your local LINks (soon to be Healthwatch). This patient driven body will oversee the functioning of the new health service, and how it operates in its first year 2013/4 will set the tone for its future. It’s crucial that we hit the ground running by getting defenders of a public NHS onto those committees.

4. Join your local Clinical Commissioning Group. I am happy to report that we have secretly placed quite a lot of activists within the CCG structure. They feed back regularly on proceedings at the CCG monthly meetings. The intelligence link they provide, as well as action to upcoming commissioning decisions will greatly aid our efforts to prevent Serco/Virgin and others from gaining contracts.

5. Join your local NHS Trust. Membership is free and open to all. There are incentives such as access to discounts and free quarterly magazines. You have the right to stand for the Trust Board and you get a vote in those elections.

6. Make a complaint to the Co-Operation and Competition Panel It is not wrong to consider making a free of charge appeals to the CCP to review commissioning decisions for local NHS Trusts.

7. Join a Trade Union. Less than half of health sector employees are in Trade Unions. This makes the job of unions defending staffs interests more difficult. GMB have shown excellent leadership in sticking up for their staff who have suffered bullying in Derriford Hospital and Great Royal Western Hospital in Swindon. They certainly make the union dues well worth it.

8. Blow your whistle. We are relying on you to keep the information flow going. Thus far, the feedback from staff, patients and activists has been outstanding. They have helped flag up threats to staff, wages, patients, hospitals etc. If you witness wrongdoing, we need to hear about it. You can be guaranteed that your identity will be kept secret. Not one whistle blower has been unmasked in any news story I have covered.

9. Become a share holder in private health companies. I am in the process of buying shares with Serco, and I intend to do the same for the other top 10 healthcare companies. This enables us to attend their AGMs and become a nuisance from the inside. It could lead to practical benefits such as forcing healthcare companies to be transparent about their salaries or quality/performance standards. The reason this is especially critical is because private health companies do not have to answer Freedom of Information legislation, nor are the obliged to follow Department of Health guidelines on whistle-blowing.

  Tweet   Share on Tumblr   submit to reddit  


About the author
Eoin is an occasional contributor. He is a founder of the Labour-Left think-tank and writes regularly at the Green Benches blog.
· Other posts by


Story Filed Under: Blog ,Health

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.


Reader comments


1. Tyler

“7. Join a Trade Union. Less than half of health sector employees are in Trade Unions. This makes the job of unions defending staffs interests more difficult”

And there I was thinking that the NHS was there for the benefit of it’s users, not the providers. Ho hum.

2. the a&e charge nurse

[1] oh, well said that man – it’s definitely an ‘either, or position’.

If you are ‘for’ patients then you can’t possibly concerned about your own working conditions, can you – on the other hand providers don’t really care about patients, they just put in all those extra hours for the hell of it?
http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/2012/02/06/coventry-doctors-working-hundreds-of-hours-of-unpaid-overtime-92746-30274772/

3. Richard Blogger

“You have the right to stand for the Trust Board and you get a vote in those elections.”

No you don’t. Trust Boards are NOT elected, they are appointed. FT members elect governors, governors are there for scrutiny, and have no right to be involved in the running of the trust or even in the annual trust strategy. Governors do have some control over big strategic decisions like whether the trust should close down, or be merged. The governors appoint the non-executive directors on the Trust Board including the Chair, the non-execs appoint the executive directors including the chief executive.

Members get a vote in governor elections, members can stand to be governors.

“Join your local Clinical Commissioning Group”.

Different CCGs work in different ways (yet again, lansley cannot be bothered to come up with a good solution) but every CCG is supposed to have patient involvement. At the moment CCGs are going through authorisation, and are writing their constitutions. The best thing that “activists” can do is put pressure on CCGs to strengthen patient involvement – I suspect many CCGs will want to keep patients as uninvolved as they can get away with. For example, GP practices do not have to have patient groups. So “activists” can press to make sure that constitutions make them as a requirement of membership of the CCG.

“Join your local LINks (soon to be Healthwatch)”

Bear in mind that Healthwatch is a tendered service. Many LINks around the country are not intending to tender. So joining a LINk now is useful especially since it gives you an opportunity to get involved in the scrutiny of local healthcare providers, but sometime before April next year it is likely that there will be another organisation delivering that service. There is nothing in the law that says that Local Healthwatch has to be a not-for-profit service, it could be Serco, Capita or Richard Branson with a clipboard.

4. Planeshift

10. Pay attention to what happens in Scotland, NI, and Wales – drawing attention to the better aspects of the health service here so you can contrast it with Lansley.

5. Max

‘1. Submit an FOI request’

What about? Good way of wasting time for the NHS employees who have to answer it – could be looking after patients instead?

‘2. Choose and NHS provider’

So – instead of attending you local private hospital for your treatment next week you must undertake some crazy process which will delay your treatment. Good luck explaining that to patients (yes, them again)

3, 4 & 5 Richard Blogger has dealt with. It’s not a bad plan to have your facts right.

‘6. Make a complaint to the Co-Operation and Competition Panel’

What about?

7. Tyler’s point @1 stands.

‘8. Blow your whistle’

Keep on blowing you should be saying – they should be doing it now.

‘9. Buy shares….’

Fair enough, if lots of people buy them then the price will increase and the capitalist running dogs of directors will get more bonus.

Not really a very good plan then.

6. Richard

“2. Choose an NHS provider, not a private one when you get your choice of operation, regardless of who provides the best quality care and value for money… This will keep demand/custom within the National Health Service and remove any incentive for public or private providers to improve patient care or become more efficient – such concerns come second to spiting the Tories.”

Fixed it for you.

7. the a&e charge nurse

[5] ‘Not really a very good plan then’ – maybe not, but still worth a punt given the perils of market driven health care.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2148139/Fury-pensioners-family-care-home-fees-doubled-125-000-year.html

I’m sure Lansley’s reforms are driven by the latest clinical evidence rather than a deep need to satisfy powerful corporations, or the pushy health lobbyists touting for business on their behalf?

8. Mat

@7; As emotively powerful as your anecdotal evidence is, you might want to reconsider trying to prove the “perils of market driven health care”, by using an example of a not-for-profit organisation raising its fees;

“‘The trust has been providing this additional care, without question, and at its own cost since early December, but we hope people understand that, as a not-for-profit organisation, we cannot continue to do this on an indefinite basis.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2148139/Fury-pensioners-family-care-home-fees-doubled-125-000-year.html#ixzz1vdB0u5gH”

So, er, yeah…

9. the a&e charge nurse

[8] ‘you might want to reconsider trying to prove the “perils of market driven health care”, by using an example of a not-for-profit organisation raising its fees’ – sure, no problem – how about this meta-analysis which found, “Private for-profit hospitals result in higher payments for care than private not-for-profit hospitals. Evidence strongly supports a policy of not-for-profit health care delivery at the hospital level”.
http://www.cmaj.ca/content/170/12/1817.abstract?ijkey=c96b97fb8c7b30463c8eedbcdd60f79a3cf9a94d&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha

10. Chris

@1 hits the nail right on the head.

The NHS is a large organisation run for the benefit of the people who can work there. It’s victims can get stuffed and if they dare complain they’ll be looking at an accusation of assault. It’s virtually impossible to get reasonable treatment from it – the list of people I know who’ve failed, including several who died as a result gets longer and longer. Go in with a problem and you’ll get a test for something else.

It’s corrupt, expensive and useless. It desperately needs to be changed.


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
  1. Liberal Conspiracy

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley's destruction of our NHS http://t.co/1fCIkTqN

  2. Jason Brickley

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS http://t.co/Ibgm0IWq

  3. abi ramanan

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley's destruction of our NHS http://t.co/1fCIkTqN

  4. leftlinks

    Liberal Conspiracy – Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS http://t.co/sVUJXJxP

  5. Daibhid Ceannaideach

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley's destruction of our NHS http://t.co/1fCIkTqN

  6. Derek Oakley

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/Dg36hb8M via @libcon

  7. Josiah Mortimer

    Nine things you can do to halt the destruction of our NHS << author is buying shares (why more than one?) in Serco… http://t.co/zeikmJjd

  8. Natacha Kennedy

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/heyAGns1 via @libcon

  9. whalemonster

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley's destruction of our NHS http://t.co/1fCIkTqN

  10. Nick H.

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley's destruction of our NHS http://t.co/1fCIkTqN

  11. BevR

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/UQLa2rnH via @libcon

  12. Foxy52

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/UQLa2rnH via @libcon

  13. Richard

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/0BM3LTnu via @libcon

  14. Sharon Root

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/Bs9nLrjP via @libcon

  15. Andreas Baader

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/a9a2vF5s via @libcon

  16. Clive Lewis

    9 things you can do to halt lansleys-destruction-of-our #NHS http://t.co/CgDs3bXt

  17. Tristram Wyatt

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley's destruction of our NHS http://t.co/1fCIkTqN

  18. ?

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley's destruction of our NHS http://t.co/1fCIkTqN

  19. Pamela Heywood

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS http://t.co/auImxtVC

  20. sueky

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS http://t.co/auImxtVC

  21. Sian Rabi-Laleh

    RT @libcon Nine things you can do to halt Lansley's destruction of our NHS http://t.co/1AUGx7Wd

  22. UNISON Health

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley's destruction of our NHS… http://t.co/bBHz89jz

  23. Mathew Danaher

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley's destruction of our NHS… http://t.co/bBHz89jz

  24. Alan Casual

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley's destruction of our NHS… http://t.co/bBHz89jz

  25. Marian Jervis

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley's destruction of our NHS… http://t.co/bBHz89jz

  26. Dick Wells

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/fgednXb4 via @libcon

  27. Pucci D

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley's destruction of our NHS http://t.co/1fCIkTqN

  28. Michael Anthony Snai

    Nine things you can do to halt Lansley’s destruction of our NHS | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/xRhOrL2Q

  29. Paul Lomax

    @kcorrick http://t.co/V0IfX1sn http://t.co/P0Yj1DNH http://t.co/SbbZRsBD





Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.