Whose NHS? Our NHS!

‘Whose NHS? Our NHS!’ – came the call as thousands of people joined the People’s March for the NHS in London yesterday for the last leg of a 300-mile march organised by a group of mothers from County Durham – the ‘Darlo Mums’.

The message from the eleven mums, Joanna, Rehana, Mel, Linda, Jo, Cath, Hazel, Wendy, Rosie, Helen and Emma was a simple one – that the NHS is owned by and loved by the people and every effort will be made to stop it being sold off.

As an MP, and as Shadow London Minister, something I hear more and more about is our NHS.  Thousands of frontline staff have been lost from the NHS since David Cameron became Prime Minister. Here in London we have seen hospitals forced to turn ambulances away – wasting vital time for those needing emergency treatment. Hundreds of ambulance staff have found themselves in the firing line. We have seen eight of our London A&Es threatened with closure or downgrade – nine until the courts ruled Jeremy Hunt acted unlawfully over Lewisham.

And its days like yesterday that remind me how proud I am to be a Londoner. Standing in the shadows of the Houses of Parliament, the message from the fifteen thousand strong crowd to the government, was loud and clear. We saw speaker after speaker, from Owen Jones to my London Labour colleagues Andy Slaughter, Diane Abbott, Seema Malhotra and Clive Efford speak about the need to remedy public over privatisation, integration over fragmentation, people before profit, and collaboration over competition.

What made yesterday special however was the sheer sense of solidarity, energy and optimism in the air. The best speech of the day hands down came from Joanna Adams, the Darlo Mums founder. She called the group of eleven Mums ‘ordinary’ – but the eyes of Londoners yesterday they were anything but. The rally finished in the late afternoon sunshine with the one and only Billy Bragg playing ‘I keep faith’ to the huge Trafalgar Square crowds.

And the message we want to send to the Darlo Mums, and to the millions who have supported the march, either in person, through donations or on social media, is that when it comes to the NHS, to have faith in Labour. We rescued the NHS after years of Tory neglect before and we’ll do it again. As my Shadow Cabinet colleague Andy Burham spoke about yesterday, we’ll repeal David Cameron’s NHS changes that put private profit before patients so that NHS professionals can focus on your care. Because the NHS is the Labour Party’s greatest achievement. We created it, we saved it, we value it and we will always support it.

Sadiq Khan MP is Shadow Minister for London and MP for Tooting