Outcry as #Labour says it will go #private to clear #NHS backlog
Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting has stabbed the NHS in the back by saying a future Labour government would pay private health companies to reduce the Tory-created health treatment backlog.
Organisations within the NHS responded instantly by calling for healthcare workers to join a union and get organised – on the reasonable ground that “saving the NHS isn’t coming out of Westminster.”
Others reacted with fury to Streeting himself:
Replace a party wanting to privatise our NHS with a party wanting to privatise our NHS?
Fuck off!— Jules #FreeAssange #FreePalestine🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸 (@celtjules66) January 7, 2022
And his claim that private sector involvement can cut waiting lists has been disproved:
Wes Streeting says private sector involvement can bring down waiting lists
• Since 2010, private sector involvement is up 93%
• Waiting lists are up 200%
Wes Streeting is demonstrably wrong.
— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) January 7, 2022
But then, Streeting appears to have a reputation for backing duff causes:
Wes Streeting fought harder to have a @McDonalds stand at Labour Conference than he's fighting for the #NHS
— Mrs Gee #TransformPolitics 💚🇵🇸🍉 (@earthygirl011) January 7, 2022
His comment was a betrayal of a key leadership pledge by current Labour leader Keir Starmer. Funny, that – only last week, Starmer said he stood by those pledges, even though he has broken every single one of them since becoming party leader.
One of Keir Starmer’s key leadership pledges was to abolish NHS outsourcing to private companies.
Today Labour announced they would outsource NHS patients to private healthcare providers to cut waiting lists.
Both the PM and the leader of the opposition are shameless liars. pic.twitter.com/eE50A5zUAH
— Evolve Politics (@evolvepolitics) January 7, 2022
Even if they do join trade unions, those unions are being advised to disaffiliate from Starmer’s Tepid Tory Party, in favour of stronger activism in their own right – for a very pertinent and obvious reason:
So Trade Unions involved in health provision who might be affiliated to the Labour Party – what are your members getting in return for their contributions now Wes Streeting has committed to continuing to privatise the NHS?
— Damien Willey 🟢 🔴 (@KernowDamo) January 7, 2022
Finally, the satirists have had a chance for some fun:
It's been the plan all along.#nhscrisis pic.twitter.com/c7PYpaoaiJ
— Momentum 🌹 (@PeoplesMomentum) January 7, 2022
I’m not saying Alan B’Stard could have been a blueprint for Streeting. But the future the fictional character suggested makes more sense than the Shadow Health Secretary’s fantasy.
Besides, there’s an obvious answer to the provision of NHS healthcare by private firms which is that the UK government should simply take it.
The process is called expropriation. In times of national need (like now), the government may simplytake the required service from the appropriate source, which must provide it.
That would be simple and cost-effective. Ah, but it would upset Wes Streeting’s privatisation-based beliefs, wouldn’t it? Poor baby.
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And when the mistakes are made by these “Private” companies it will be the NHS who pick up the pieces, do we actually have to pay twice for incompetence?
Excellent point! I have written at least one article pointing out that after people have gone private for operations, they have had to go to the NHS to have those BOTCHED operations fixed.