Unison general secretary, Dave Prentis, yesterday pledged the union will ‘fight and fight’ until the Health and Social Care Bill is defeated and the NHS is safe.
Speaking at the union’s health conference in Liverpool, Prentis accused Health Secretary Lansley of throwing a ‘grenade right into the middle of healthcare in our country.’
He told the 1,000 delegates that Unison members have the union’s full support to defend their service, their pay, their conditions and their pensions.
To applause, he warned the government that the union would not be afraid to take strike action in that cause.
He said the government were plain wrong: ‘Making our health workers pay more for less. Fifty per cent extra contributions – equivalent to a three per cent pay cut for reduced benefits.
‘I want to make this clear – if the government tries to take away our pension schemes we will gear our union up for industrial action and we will stop them.’
On the Health and Social Care Bill, he said that the union must keep up the pressure on the coalition to stop it.
Prentis declared: ‘Andrew Lansley talking about liberating the NHS – liberated to do what?
‘The freedom to run up massive debts, the freedom to go bust? Liberated to be bought out by private companies.
‘The freedom to make as much money as they can from patients that can pay for their care.
‘Private patients first, with the rest of us at the back of the queue.
‘I don’t know about you, but when I go to my GP, I want my GP thinking about what’s best for me, not what’s best for his budget. An £80bn gamble with patients’ lives.
‘We cannot rest until the guts are ripped out of this Bill.
‘Andrew Lansley talks about a “natural pause”, well I say “keep your dirty paws to yourself and keep your dirty paws off our health service”.
‘We want the Health Bill scrapped and we will fight you all the way!’
Prentis also pledged that the union will do everything in its power to stop the privatisation of the Blood and Transplant Service, saying: ‘Millions of donors willing to give their blood for the benefit of others – no money changing hands.
‘Donating organs with no money changing hands. Now we are told that the transport and storage of blood and organs are to be privatised.
‘Private companies coming in to extract blood money. It’s unethical and it’s immoral.’
Paul Foley, Unison North West Head of Health told conference: ‘Our members, who work on the front line of NHS services, have long campaigned against the Bill, they see the Bill as fundamentally flawed and destructive to NHS provision, and it should be abandoned.’
Unison warned that the Bill will still require all health services to be subject to competition and privatisation.
It added that this will lead to cherry picking of profitable health services leading to destabilisation and possible closure of remaining NHS services. The policy is also hugely bureaucratic and expensive.
