• Con-Dem White Paper will "Eviscerate NHS"
  Press Release July 13

  Monday 19th July 2010
  
  The Con-Dem coalition could bring the end of the NHS as we know it - by 2015, according to pressure group London Health Emergency, which has been campaigning since 1983.
  Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has set his sights on reducing the NHS from a public service delivering health care to a fund that commissions care from a range of private providers in the new White Paper unveiled yesterday.
  Tens of thousands of staff face redundancy with the scrapping of Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities: tens of thousands more who are delivering front-line health care will also lose their jobs, beginning this year, as £20 billion of "efficiency savings" are pushed through faster than planned, by 2014.
  Increasing numbers of health workers in NHS Trusts and community health services who keep their jobs will find themselves against their will working for so-called "social enterprises," with the loss of their NHS pay scale, pensions and conditions of service.
  Many others working for Foundation Trusts could also face the loss of national NHS pay and conditions, and see their Trust bosses cashing in on government plans to lift the cap on income from pay beds, private medicine, and deals with private companies. Andrew Lansley has made clear his wish to go further and make Foundation Trusts "off balance sheet" as completely external providers to the NHS - meaning that their staff, too, would cease to be NHS employees. All Trusts have to be Foundations by 2013.
  Meanwhile by scrapping any local or regional planning mechanism, and handing £70 billion of commissioning budgets to local consortia of GPs, ministers are opening up a chaotic competitive market, but also the prospect of a new "postcode lottery" for patients and the widening of inequalities in health provision -- as happened when the Tories last experimented expensively and unsuccessfully with GP Fundholding in the 1990s.
  But even the illusion of new powers and freedoms for GPs as commissioners is punctured by the context of massive spending cuts, coupled with the threat that GPs will be held accountable for the consequences of their decisions, and required to take unpopular decisions on cuts and closures of local services. Ministers insist that there will be no bail-outs for organisations which overspend public budgets.
  London Health Emergency director Dr John Lister said:
  "This new set of policies builds on all the worst elements of the previous government's so-called reforms.
  "It will establish even more private providers making profit from the public purse, while NHS staff could become a virtually extinct species in England.
  "Any GPs who really believe that they can deliver improved care for their patients in this type of health competitive market are kidding themselves.
  "Some campaigners have wrongly cried 'wolf' at earlier reform packages, but this White Paper leaves every previous attempt at privatisation and marketisation standing. This time we really are facing the end of the NHS as we know it - by 2015.
  "Now is the time for every health union, professional body, pensioners' group, campaigner and member of the public to get together to force the Con-Dems to back off."

• Lansley challenged to rule out A&E closures

  Tuesday 25th May 2010
  
  In the aftermath of ambiguous statements from new Health Secretary Andrew Lansley that hospital "reconfiguration" will be stopped "except where work is already at the implementation stage", campaign group London Health Emergency is today demanding a categoric assurance that plans to axe A&E units in London and elsewhere will be permanently scrapped.
  
  Prior to the election powerful campaigns had challenged plans for A&E closures in various parts of London including
  " Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield
  " King George Hospital, Ilford
  " Whittington Hospital, Islington
  " Queen Mary's Hospital, Bexley
  " Ealing Hospital
  
  Mr Lansley's statement suggested that while reconfiguration was being stopped, it could resume if "GP support" could be demonstrated. Campaigners will be suspicious that health bosses such as those in South East London, who have again vowed to press ahead with the dismemberment of Queen Mary's Hospital in Sidcup, could manipulate local GPs to ensure that closures proceed.
  
  LHE Information Director Dr John Lister said:
  
  "Everyone living near a threatened A&E will welcome a halt to closures: but they will want a permanent reprieve for these vital services, not a short stay of execution.
  
  "The problem is that while the immediate threat of cuts has been lifted, if only temporarily, the underlying financial pressures that have been driving the cuts are still very much alive.
  
  "PCTs and Trusts across the capital have been firming up plans to cut spending this year and every year until at least 2017, cutting a total of up to £5 billion, with inevitable large scale loss of jobs, beds and services. NHS London, which has the most advanced and aggressive plan for cuts in the country, may try to pre-empt their own threatened abolition as a Strategic Health Authority by driving through the cuts they have been planning.
  
  "Andrew Lansley's party promised to "ringfence NHS spending" against cuts and to increase NHS budgets in real terms each year: voters will be looking to see whether this means what it says, or if the predicted cash freeze sets in this year and throws the NHS improvements like the 18-week maximum wait into reverse.
  
  "He should start by giving a clear assurance to local people, and an unmistakable instruction to local health bosses, that no A&E should close and that funding will be increased to ensure that vital services will be kept intact."

• Mental health cuts bring fears of Mid-Staffs-style scandal

  Saturday 3rd April 2010
  
  Staff in one of London's mental health foundation Trusts are warning that a package of £9 million in spending cuts being brought in by Trust bosses could result in a collapse of care standards on the scale of the recent scandal in Mid Staffordshire Hospitals.
  
  Most worrying are the cuts proposed by East London NHS Foundation Trust, details of which have been leaked to Lon don Health Emergency. They include cuts in front-line nursing staff on acute wards, reducing by 2 Whole Time Equivalent staff per ward - to save £2m. The changes, which come into force this week, could put the safety of staff and patients alike at risk, and make it next to impossible for the remaining staff to deliver high quality care.
  
  To make matters worse, new rotas would also restrict the crucial "handover period" between shifts to just one hour, jeopardising the necessary exchange of information on patients with complex needs, and would also oblige nurses to cover six shifts instead of five.
  
  Other cuts include £500,000 from the medical budget, £500,000 from Therapy budgets, and cuts ranging from £500,000 to £1 million from each locality directorate. £1.5m is also to be cut from corporate services, although it is less clear how this will impact on patient care. More cuts are to follow next year and the year after, as the Trust seeks total savings of £15-£20 million.
  
  The management proposals to the Joint Staff Committee make clear that all of these cutbacks are cash-driven, stressing that "It has become increasingly apparent that the NHS is going to be expected to make significant savings in coming years to cope with a reduction in income and an accompanying increase in costs … This will result in a reduction of budgets across all areas".
  
  But East London NHS Foundation Trust bosses have not come clean with the public on the scale and impact of these cuts, and staff fear for their jobs if they speak out publicly. Concerned staff have approached London Health Emergency to help them raise the alarm over the potential damage to patient care.
  
  Commenting on the cutbacks, LHE's Information Director Dr John Lister said:
  "These cuts are a shocking indictment of the methods of this secretive Trust, which clearly prefers to risk a major collapse in patient care to save relatively small amounts of money than to work with their own trade unions to help publicise the resource constraints that are driving them into these panic measures.
  
  "We hear that middle and senior managers are among those who have expressed concern that these cuts could have similarly disastrous effects to the previous ill-judged cuts in night staff by the Trust. These resulted in a series of serious incidents, culminating in the attempted murder of a nurse on night shift: the subsequent press furore forced a reversal of the cuts.
  
  "East London is among the first to translate NHS London's plan for £5 billion of cuts across the capital into actual service cuts, beginning this week: and it shows that the consequences could be as serious as a major collapse in front line services.
  
  "We are calling on the Trust to withdraw these plans immediately, maintain existing services, and join campaigners across London fighting cutbacks, closures and downgrading of services."

• NHS cuts put more hospitals at risk of Mid-Staffs failures

  Friday 26th February 2010
  
  THE SHOCKING failures of management and care at Stafford Hospital revealed in yesterday's report into the scandal could be echoed in other hospitals up and down the country if ministers insist on pushing through the massive cutbacks in spending and impossible "efficiency savings" that are now being discussed, warns pressure group Health Emergency.
  
  A key factor in the chronic lack of nursing and other staff, and desperately poor staff training at Mid Staffordshire Trust was the 150 jobs that were axed in a £10m cost-cutting operation to ensure that the Trust brought its finances into balance - to secure Foundation Trust status.
  
  Nurse and medical staffing were slashed to well below safe minimum levels - and the Trust was rubber-stamped as a Foundation shortly before its appalling levels of care were belatedly identified by the Healthcare Commission.
  
  But dozens, if not hundreds of NHS and Foundation Hospitals are facing cuts much larger than £10m, and much larger cuts in staffing as the squeeze on NHS spending takes effect from 2010-11. Some Trusts such as Leicestershire, Leeds, Derby, Heatherwood and Wexham, and the Royal Free are already axing hundreds of jobs.
  
  Many more have yet to announce how they aim to deliver the required "efficiency savings" and balance their books while Primary Care Trusts concentrate on diverting as many patients as they can away from hospitals, and slash the "tariff" of payments for treating patients.
  
  Health Emergency's Information Director John Lister said:
  
  "Health Secretary Andy Burnham has correctly argued that lessons have to be learned from the Mid Staffordshire scandal: but it makes no sense to keep on having inquiries about it if more and more Trust managers are simply going to be forced into the same desperate situation as the Stafford Hospital management.
  
  "There is a real danger that the mounting NHS pressure to deliver huge, quite unprecedented demands for "efficiency savings" and spending cuts - on a level never ever achieved in the NHS in its 62-year history - will drive more managers to seek similar irresponsible savings at the expense of patient care.
  
  "If ministers - and the opposition politicians cynically trying to cash in on this tragic situation - really want to reassure the public that no such thing will happen again, we need them to take the pressure off managers, and back-track on the savings targets and cash allocations for the NHS.
  
  "We need all the main parties to commit NOW to increase NHS spending by a minimum of 4% per year in real terms. If tens of billions can be created and spent on "quantitative easing" to benefit the bankers, no voter will object to some of the same generosity being shown to prevent unacceptable and dangerous cuts to our NHS."

• Thirteen London Hospitals set to lose services:
  Big turn-out expected at London-wide rally called by BMA

  Monday 22nd February 2010
  
  EMBARGO: Not for publication before 12.00 noon Weds February 24 2010
  
  AT LEAST THREE of the SIX district general hospitals that are due to see services scaled down or closed in North West London have now been identified in the 'Integrated Strategic Plan' drawn up behind closed doors by Primary Care Trusts. This brings the London-wide total of hospitals known to be at risk to THIRTEEN.
  
  The 72-page NW London document makes clear that it seeks to "reduce the level of acute services on the Ealing [Hospital] site" (page 51), while it reports that "the Board of West Middlesex Hospital Trust have recently clarified that they do not believe that their organisation has an independent future". Central Middlesex Hospital, too is identified as facing further downgrading of services to reduce it to a "local hospital". (page 51)
  
  With just three "major acute" hospitals to service the NW London population of 1.9 million in eight boroughs, it is clear that three more must be scaled down, raising fears that Hillingdon Hospital, too, and key services at Chelsea and Westminster and Hammersmith hospitals could be scaled back, leaving just St Mary's, Northwick Park and Charing Cross as "major acute" hospitals, and long journeys for patients from many parts of outer London needing hospital care.
  
  The North West London cutbacks are part of a programme launched by NHS London which it admits could axe up to a third of hospital beds in London. From the most recent Department of Health bed figures from the capital, that could mean a massive 5,600 front-line beds to close from a total of 16,868. Also under threat or facing virtual closure as district hospitals are Chase Farm, the Whittington, King George's Hospital, Ilford, Queen Mary's Sidcup and one other hospital in South East London, and Kingston, Epsom & St Helier and Mayday hospitals in South West London.
  
  This could mean tens of thousands of the most seriously ill patients in the capital being obliged to travel much further to access hospital care.
  
  The figures were highlighted last month in a critical BMA report 'On the Brink', which links the large scale cuts to NHS London's goal of cutting over £5 billion from health spending in the capital by 2017 as the growth in NHS funding grinds to a halt.
  
  It points out that NHS London is seeking to divert more than half of all outpatient work in the capital (5 million appointments), and nearly two thirds of A&E activity (almost 2 million) to experimental "polysystems", few of which as yet exist. This switch of millions of patients from hospital departments to primary care would mean London's hospital budgets would be slashed by upwards of £1 billion a year, an average reduction of almost £40m for each of the capital's 26 acute Trusts and Foundation Trusts - easily enough to force many of them out of business.
  
  The NHS London plans are based on controversial estimates contained in a document by US-based management consultants McKinsey which is being kept secret, preventing any scrutiny of the assumptions and the data they have used.
  
  On the Brink author John Lister said:
  "Campaigns are springing up all over London as local people wake up to the threat posed to their local health services. Redbridge campaigners have been protesting for months now, as have Chase Farm. The campaign to save the Whittington Hospital is growing rapidly. And South West London campaigners have already joined forces and launched a combined fight to defend all of the local hospitals that are threatened.
  
  "This is a problem that will gnaw away at the support of whichever party wins the election, with a succession of high-profile and possibly chaotic changes and cutbacks in the NHS, tearing the heart out of the existing hospital network, and axing thousands of health workers' jobs.
  
  "Whenever hospital services in London have been threatened over the years there has been a strong campaign to save them. What we don't yet know is where many local MPs and councillors stand on the potential closure of local services. They have to decide. Will they fight with local people - or against them?"
  
  
  NOTE TO EDITORS:
  
  The BMA Public Meeting has been called for 7pm on Thursday February 27, at BMA House in Tavistock Square, WC1. John Lister will be among the platform speakers.

• CAMPAIGNERS DEMAND PUBLICATION OF SECRET LONDON NHS PLAN

  Thursday 11th February 2010
  
  Campaign group London Health Emergency today demanded the publication of a secret hospital strategy document which could see the closure or downgrading of at least 11 of the capital's 31 Accident and Emergency departments.
  
  Last night, a leaked document passed to the BBC outlined plans that could see the axing and down-scaling of services at five hospitals in North West London alone leaving just three major centres to cover the area.
  
  In South West London there are growing fears that Kingston, St Helier in Carshalton and Mayday in Croydon will all see front-line services closed or downgraded with the hospitals becoming satellite units of St George's in Tooting. A new cross-South West London campaign to fight the plans will be launched next week.
  
  In South East London, the threat to Queen Mary's in Sidcup is already well documented, but campaigners fear that one more hospital may be added to the closure programme as the scale of the financial cuts required stacks up.
  
  In North East London a "business plan" already out to consultation proposes the effective closure of King George's in Ilford and massive bed cuts at Whipps Cross, Barts and the London and the Homerton. Active campaigns are already challenging these plans.
  
  To the north of the capital, campaigners continue to fight the closure of services at Chase Farm in Enfield, and plans to merge the Whittington with the Royal Free with the loss of A&E at the Whittington.
  
  Geoff Martin, Chair of pressure group London Health Emergency said:
  
  "Last night's leak from the North West London review, added to information leaking out in South West London, published details in NE London, and what we know about other parts of the capital, exposes the fact that the biggest closure programme ever cooked up for London's hospitals is being stitched together -- behind closed doors.
  
  "We are demanding that NHS London end the leaks and speculation by publishing all of the working documents on the London sector reviews and we have submitted a Freedom of Information request today on exactly those lines.
  
  "It is a scandal that the future of up to a third of London's A&E departments is being carved up in secret meetings despite the fact that these are life or death services paid for by Londoner's out of their taxes. Londoner's need to wake up and realise just what is going on, and just what is at stake, if we don't call the faceless, well-paid NHS London bureaucrats to account."

• Ministers dismiss Commission findings: now dismiss the Commission!

  Friday 5th February 2010
  
  Health campaigners have welcomed the news in the Health Service Journal that the Department of Health has dismissed as "anecdote" a report from the "Cooperation and Competition Panel" set up by previous Health Secretary Alan Johnson.
  
  The panel had been asked to intervene after Great Yarmouth and Waveney Primary Care Trust made clear that a £25m a year contract to run community services would only be open to NHS tenders. Various private sector companies, right wing and pro-market academics and so-called "social enterprises" have complained that this is in conflict with the Department's own principles and rules on competition.
  
  The PCT has argued that they were only following the new policy announced by current Health Secretary Andy Burnham last autumn, when he announced that the NHS would be the "preferred provider" of services unless there were insuperable failures in the quality of care.
  
  But despite changing the policy in a more sensible direction, Burnham has left in place much of the apparatus to implement the opposing policy: this includes the Cooperation and Competition panel, chaired by a leading private health boss, Lord Carter of Coles, and staffed almost exclusively with people from the private sector with little if any record of constructive involvement with public services.
  
  Worse, the competition policy that the Panel was set up to police is now part of the huge and costly bureaucratic structure of "World Class Commissioning", which has soaked up management time and involved Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts spending millions on appointing otherwise useless Commercial Directors and other layers of management required to establish and monitor a complex "market" in health care.
  
  Calling for the Panel to be scrapped as the first of a series of major cost savings that would also improve efficiency in the NHS, Health Emergency information director John Lister said:
  
  "We're told the NHS faces cuts of £15-£20 billion over the next few years to balance the books as the growth in spending grinds to a halt. So surely the most sensible way to save large sums would be to strip out all of these surplus and unproductive bureaucrats, and the costly management consultants that have been employed to do much of their work: none of them contribute in any way to patient care.
  
  "The market-style reforms have been an expensive fiasco. Andy Burnham has at last begun to recognise this, but he should go the next step to save money in a way that every health worker and patient would happily support.
  
  "Boot out the over-paid bureaucrats, and the over-priced private providers, and concentrate on allowing the NHS to deliver top quality services with the minimum of overhead costs."

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