The end of the NHS is coming and we’ve barely managed a march

By Ellie Mae O’Hagan / @MissEllieMae

The National Health Act of 1946 had three readings, and each time (as Bevan eagerly reminded us) the Tories voted against it. So there’s a kind of symbolism to the new Health and Social Care Act’s third reading: the Tories are ending national health in the same way they refused to let it begin.

There were some, like me, who felt the Tories could never be trusted with the NHS. We didn’t believe Cameron in 2006 when he described it as ‘precious‘ and hailed the end of ‘pointless and disruptive reorganisations.’ For many in this country, the Tories will never be a safe pair of hands when it comes to national health. But our fears seemed unfounded, paranoid even. Most people simply couldn’t believe the government would do such a thing.

If you had any doubts about the Tories’ intentions, now is the time to dispense with them. 38 Degrees has just completed an extensive, and expensive, legal review of the Health and Social Care Act, and its consequences are undeniable. You can download the conclusions in their entirety from the 38 Degrees website, but here’s a summary:

• The Secretary of State will no longer have to ensure NHS delivers what the public want and expect. Instead, these responsibilities will be handed to quasi-independent commissioners, some of whom are already employing American healthcare companies to meter out services.
• The risk of a post code lottery has been very much increased. Elected representatives will no longer have the power to choose what health services are closed or improved in a local area. This will mean patients can no longer expect the government to ensure a consistent level of healthcare regardless of where they live. This has been on the cards for a while: in December, Laurence Buckman, Chair of the General Practitioners’ Committee made the curt observation, ‘presumably we’ll have a crappy consortium somewhere on Lundy for people that no-one wants.’
• Competition law will apply to the NHS, as though it were a utilities or telecoms company. This means private companies, with their costly and ruthless legal teams, will be able to challenge unsuccessful bids for work in the courts. The upshot of this is a system geared heavily towards private companies. But don’t take my word for it – ask the American healthcare giant Humana, described by a whistleblower as ‘inherently unethical.’ When asked for an opinion on the bill, a spokesman for Humana charmlessly replied, ‘are we excited? You bet we are.’

I remember Tony Benn’s response when asked what would happen if the government tried to get rid of the NHS, ‘there would be a revolution.’ I don’t blame him for thinking that. The NHS is connected to all of us – me included. My mother has been a nurse for forty years. I consider the NHS to be a memorial to my granddad, a POW in WWII. It’s more significant than any cenotaph: it’s civil society in action; it’s institutionalised altruism.

But Tony Benn was wrong. The end of the NHS is coming and we’ve barely managed a march, let alone a revolution. How can we let this pass us by? How can we allow universal healthcare be relegated to a chapter in a history book? Now is the time to take a stand, and we shouldn’t have waited this long. If we value the NHS, we have to fight for it, just as Bevan prophesised when it was founded. And this is a battle that belongs to all of us. In twenty years’ time we don’t want our children to learn of the death of the NHS and ask us why we did so very little to stop it.

Sign the e-petiton to force the government to debate the withdrawal of the Health and Social Care Bill in parliament.