IN HIS first interview since becoming the coalition Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt spelt out bluntly that capitalism could no longer afford a national health system and that its budget would be cut to pay for the debt crisis.
Dispensing with the usual lies that the government had ‘ringfenced’ the £110 billion budget, Hunt cheerfully confessed that the Tories could not promise to protect NHS spending after the next election.
Hunt was being completely dishonest about this, as they have done nothing to protect it in the past. Indeed, all the Tories and their coalition partners have done is force cut after cut, demanding ‘savings’ to the tune of £20 billion and driving hospitals into administration and closure.
But now Hunt has come out with the truth – that all the cuts and closures experienced so far will be nothing compared to what the future holds as the full impact of the world banking crisis explodes the weak British economy.
His statement was, in effect, a slap in the face for the Labour Party leadership and the shadow health secretary Andy Burnham.
Given that the Labour Party is as committed as the Tories to rescuing British capitalism by bringing down the massive sovereign debt, they will also be unable to guarantee that the NHS budget will not be savaged despite all the rhetoric from Burnham at the party conference this week.
Burnham’s speech on the NHS and at a fringe meeting has been greeted as a cast-iron guarantee to ‘save’ the NHS, especially by the leaders of health unions.
Unite, which represents over 100,000 health workers, described it as a ‘beacon of hope’.
What Burnham actually promised was that if Labour is elected in two years’ time it would repeal the Health and Social Care Act. He did not give a commitment to drive the privateers out of the NHS, only that they would investigate the legalities of making the NHS a preferred provider – in fact, he specifically stated that there is a place for the private market in healthcare provision.
As for PFI, which was forced on hospitals by the last Labour government and which is largely responsible for the bankruptcy now faced by entire health trusts, Burnham explicitly defended them merely saying that ‘some PFI deals were poor value for money’. Not true – PFI was about opening up the NHS to private speculators and paving the way for the closure and privatisation of hospitals and services that we are witnessing today.
His promise to repeal the Act is meaningless, as the brutal truth is that in two years’ time, if allowed, the Tory-led coalition will have completely smashed the NHS beyond repair and, as Hunt has carefully pointed out, any government committed to propping up the banks is going to have to gouge the money from the Welfare State, including the NHS.
Neither the Labour nor trade union bureaucracy has led any real fight to defend a single hospital from closure, in fact they have determinedly fought to restrict action to the level of protest – now they will try and limit it to waiting for the next election.
This struggle cannot be put off for a moment. The NHS must be defended by establishing Councils of Action in every locality to organise the occupations of wards and hospitals to prevent their closure.
This must be the first step in defending individual parts of the NHS under immediate threat, but to defend the entire NHS requires the removal of this government.
This means demanding that the TUC call an indefinite general strike to kick out the government and go forward to a workers government that will nationalise the banks and all the privateers, and guarantee a universal free health service.
