ON WEDNESDAY morning, at 9.00am, 15 NHS Direct Action and UK Uncut activists visited 2020health to protest against the think-tank’s role in lobbying for NHS privatisation; two were arrested.
The think-tank, which claims to be ‘independent and grassroots’, has been a key influence on Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill.
Dressed in scrubs, the protesters entered the building at 83 Victoria Street through the front door and took the lift up to 2020health’s offices, where they asked to see the chairman, Tom Sackville.
After being refused an audience with a representative from 2020health, the activists were asked to leave and did so peacefully.
Once outside, they continued their protest, but were quickly confronted by over 20 riot police and one FIT team surveillance officer.
Two activists were then searched and arrested on suspicion of ‘aggravated criminal damage’.
The protesters had been handing out leaflets to the public and had marked the pavement outside the office with ‘NHS’ in a water-based fake blood solution.
The protest opens a major new front in the battle to save public services, targeting the think-tanks and NGOs who plan to profit from NHS ‘reform’.
The group of medical students, health workers and NHS users are angry over the access 2020health has been given to senior Conservatives and policy makers.
The Chair, Tom Sackville, a health minister under Margaret Thatcher, is the CEO of the International Federation of Health Plans, which represents 100 private healthcare companies in 31 countries.
The centre-right think-tank, that believes in reducing the number of NHS services provided for free, had a large presence at the Tory party conference.
The protest came just days before UK Uncut and NHS Direct Action are due to hold their first full day of action over the proposed NHS reforms.
Over 30 locations around the country are planning to occupy local bank branches and hold NHS protests with the simple message of ‘the banks are sick and in need of reform, not the NHS’.
Jane Macdonald, a medical student, said, ‘2020healthcare likes to say that it’s grassroots and independent, when in reality all it stands for is profits for large health care companies.
‘The government’s so-called NHS listening exercise is a sham. It’s clear that the only voices being listened to are those of the private sector health care companies and think-tanks that are due to rake in profits from selling off the principle of universal health care for all.
‘Andrew Lansley’s proposal to start privatising health care is an insult to the generations who have fought to build a public health care system.
‘Lansley should resign immediately and the government must start actually listening to the doctors, nurses and patients who are crying out for these reforms to be stopped.’
NHS Direct Action is a protest group of students, health workers and patients organising creative direct actions against the privatisation of the NHS.
Companies and think-tanks such as Care UK and the Policy Exchange have been previously targeted with auctions, die-ins and impromptu occupations.
UK Uncut was created eight months ago and have targetted hundreds of banks and tax avoiding retail shops such as Vodafone, Topshop and Fortnum & Mason. It is a direct action network with a national reach, and 30,000 followers on Twitter.
The main trade union for civil and public servants, the Public and Commercial Services union, has issued a statement offering full support to UK Uncut and its planned action targeting banks on Saturday May 28:
‘PCS fully supports the protests and peaceful civil disobedience tactics used by the grassroots campaigners UK Uncut.
‘In using its innovative campaigning ideas to highlight tax avoidance and evasion by corporations and rich individuals, UK Uncut has changed and popularised the debate about how we fund public services and what value they have in our society.
‘PCS has campaigned for tax justice for many years and we are delighted that UK Uncut has raised the profile of this issue and taken the campaign into shops and onto our high streets.
‘UK Uncut activists have attended many PCS protests and events, and have willingly shared with us their innovative approach to campaigning and communications, particularly their use of social media.
‘We are now working together on more specific campaigning ideas and look forward to continuing to press for tax justice and for proper resourcing of public services.
‘PCS also fully supports the campaign to drop the charges against the UK Uncut activists arrested at Fortnum and Mason on 26 March in what was a shameful piece of political policing after the police had assured activists they were free to leave.
‘UK Uncut’s latest planned action, “The Emergency Operation”, will see its activists peacefully occupying banks on Saturday 28 May, turning them into big society hospitals.
‘This is to highlight the injustice of the billions of pounds worth of tax breaks that the banking sector receives every year. This money could and should be invested to ensure that not a single cut needs to be made in the NHS.
‘PCS is publicising this day of action to its members and encouraging them to download and use the UK Uncut leaflet outside these occupations.
‘As well as inspiring many people – young and old – to take action for the first time, UK Uncut has also inspired organisations with long and proud records of campaigning, including PCS, and we look forward to working with them in future.’
Meanwhile the BMA said that the Health and Social Care Bill should be withdrawn or at least undergo major changes.
In its formal submission to the NHS Future Forum, the body leading the government’s ‘listening exercise’ on the Bill, the BMA said the legislation represents ‘an enormous risk’ during a time of huge financial pressure for the NHS.
It set out its own recommendations for changes to encourage the development of more integrated services, arguing that greater collaboration would be more likely to improve quality and efficiency than the current proposals to increase and enforce competition.
The key recommendations in the BMA’s response to the Future Forum are that:
• The primary role of the economic regulator, Monitor, should be amended to protecting and promoting high quality, comprehensive, integrated services, not promoting competition
• There should be an explicit duty on commissioning consortia to fully involve all relevant clinical staff in commissioning
• National and regional oversight of doctors’ education and training should be maintained, with UK-level workforce planning, and regional quality management continuing to be undertaken by deaneries (the BMA today also publishes a letter to the Future Forum from its Junior Doctors Committee)
• There should not be an artificially rigid timetable for all NHS trusts to achieve foundation status, as the current deadline of April 2014 could compromise patient safety
• The Secretary of State’s duty to secure the provision of comprehensive healthcare services for the people of England should be reinstated. Meanwhile, his or her powers over the NHS Commissioning Board on appointments, further regulations and its mandate should be subject to explicit safeguards and transparency requirements to avoid unnecessary political interference
• The NHS Commissioning Board should be required to consult with consortia, where changes affect them, before making use of its powers to ensure an appropriate level of freedom
• The independence of directors of public health should be explicitly protected by bringing together all public health staff under a single NHS agency
• Patient consent should continue to be required for disclosure of confidential patient information.
Meanwhile, commenting on yesterday’s report from the Public Accounts Committee on the impact of the 2007-08 changes to public service pensions, Dr Andrew Dearden, Chairman of the BMA’s Pensions Committee, said: ‘The NHS pension scheme is fair to both the tax-paying public and NHS employees, and financially sustainable in the long term.
‘As the Public Accounts Committee points out, the radical overhaul it underwent in 2008 is bringing substantial savings to taxpayers, with costs set to continue to decrease well into the future.
‘Over the next five years, the NHS pension scheme will actually provide a surplus to the Treasury of over £10 billion.
‘The Public Accounts Committee is right to point out that the government needs to carefully assess the potential consequences of further changes to public sector pensions.
‘Another sharp increase in contributions for NHS staff, or an increase in the retirement age, is likely to destabilise the largest public sector pension scheme, increasing the burden on the state, and creating problems with retention of senior staff.’
