‘THIS government can’t wait to destroy the NHS,’ RMT general secretary Bob Crow told News Line yesterday.
The rail union leader was responding to a savage attack on the NHS – including bringing in police to prosecute doctors, nurses, and managers – advocated by Health Secretary Hunt in a newspaper interview on Saturday.
Crow continued: ‘The government want private hospitals which only the rich can afford.
‘The unions should take action to bring down this government and any government that attacks the NHS.
‘That’s why we’re calling for a general strike.’
He added: ‘The police should be brought in to prosecute this government for its attacks on working class people.’
Hunt complained that ‘professional bodies’ like the RCN ‘were acting like trade unions’ and defending their members.
Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Director of Nursing Janet Davies hit back at Hunt’s attack on the RCN.
Davies told News Line: ‘What Jeremy Hunt doesn’t pick up is the broader issue in the Francis report.
‘There is an issue of those on the front line bearing the brunt of cuts and culture problems.
‘Scapegoating individuals is the wrong thing.
‘The cuts being made in budgets and the time and money involved in a major reorganisation is quite a toxic mixture.
‘We would certainly stand up for whistleblowers as well as defend our members’ working conditions.
‘We are defending patient care. That’s where our members are working. We are seeking to ensure working conditions that allow safe patient care.
‘We know there is a direct correlation between staff welfare and the environment in which they work and the safety of patients.
‘Yet the government accuse us of scaremongering when we raise the shortage of nurses.’
A Unison spokesperson said: ‘The NHS treats 1.5m patients every single day and the vast majority of staff remain compassionate and committed.
‘It is outrageous for Jeremy Hunt to cry crocodile tears over our health service at the same time as cutting its budget, axing staff, including 7,000 nurses and overseeing an expensive and unnecessary top-down reorganisation.
‘The Tories’ true agenda is to convince the public that the NHS isn’t working and allow the private sector in to “come to the rescue”. The government needs to give the NHS the necessary funding and support to allow staff to get on with the job – caring for patients.’
Former consultant sugeon, BMA member Anna Athow, said: ‘Hunt is now using the Francis report on Mid Staffs to attack NHS staff and subject them to police investigation and criminal prosecutions.’
She added: ‘As for criminal activity, Hunt should look in the mirror, it is he and his ilk in successive governments which developed the oppressive “culture” of financial targets and massive cuts and reforms, and gave these managers huge bullying powers.
‘The health unions have to find their backbones at last.
‘They have to organise united industrial action to support staff fighting to defend their jobs and maintain services to patients, like the women in Mid Yorks.
‘The answer to the Mid Staffs crisis is not to close down the hospital but to restore it and all the other threatened hospitals. That means mobilising to bring down this government and replacing it with a workers’ government.
‘Control of the NHS must revert to the clinical professionals, patients and the public once more.’
