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Health bill 'first birthday party' soured by united opposition, says Unite

19 January 2012

The first birthday of the controversial the Health and Social Care Bill has turned sour for Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, as health professionals are now united against its privatisation agenda.

Unite, the largest union in the country with 100,000 members in the health service, said that it was exactly a year ago today (Thursday, 19 January) that the bill was laid before Parliament.

But Unite said that any first birthday celebrations that Andrew Lansley may be planning will be 'soured', as the Royal College of Nursing and Royal College of Midwives today expressed their opposition to the legislation, still before Parliament.

Unite's head of health, Rachael Maskell said today (Thursday, 19 January): 'The unions representing nurses and midwives have joined others, such as Unite, in stating their 'outright opposition' to the government's NHS plans for England.'

'On this first anniversary, we call on Andrew Lansley to scrap the bill which has brought together health professionals in an unprecedented united front.'

'It is wrong and misleading of the Health Secretary to muddy the waters by claiming that the opposition to the bill is linked to the current dispute over public sector pensions. This bill is a completely separate matter which health professionals have considered very carefully and now decided that this bill is flawed and should be scrapped.'

'Doctors and now nurses and midwives have now joined all the other professionals - pharmacists, scientists, health visitors, hospital chaplains, and speech and language therapists - in opposing the bill.'

'All NHS professionals have now stated that the bill will deeply damage the NHS and patient care. We have already seen the patient lists growing, with patients waiting longer for care.'

'It will be better to stop the bill now, before more damage is done. For the ordinary members of the public, they will have to wait longer as private patients will be able to queue jump, and £80bn of the NHS resources will drop into the hands of the private sector.'

Yesterday (Wednesday), the All Party Parliamentary Group on Primary Care and Public Health said that it was 'concerned' that the cost of the NHS 'reforms' was between £2-3bn, at a time when the government wanted the health service to save £20bn by 2015.



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