We Own It Petition against Local NHS Privatisation

Not only have We Own It launched a petition against the general privatisation of the NHS they’ve also launched one people can sign directed at their local NHS leaders against the privatisation of local services as well. I got this email earlier today and have, of course, signed it. If you’re also concerned about your local NHS services being privatised, you may like to do the same.

‘Dear David,

If you could take a 2 minute action to STOP the outsourcing of your local NHS services to profit-greedy private companies, would you do it? 

There is something you can do that will have a HUGE impact.

Sign the petition to ask local NHS leaders to commit to end NHS outsourcing.

Sign the petition to your local NHS leaders

For over a decade, the ideology of privatisation has been gaining a strong foothold in our NHS.

We were told that outsourcing was ‘the most efficient way to provide services’.

But you always knew that this wasn’t true. And now you’ve been proven absolutely right.

The evidence is clear. The preventable deaths of 557 people have been linked to the outsourcing of NHS services. 

Once you’ve made your voice heard, NHS leaders will have to face the facts: privatisation fails our health. 

Can you add your voice to the petition and demand that your local health leaders commit to end outsourcing in your local NHS now?

Sign the petition – make your voice heard

Last night we launched our End NHS privatisation, save lives campaign with over 300 other campaigners.

New research has linked 557 preventable deaths to the outsourcing of NHS services.

Ben Goodair, the Oxford academic behind the research, told us at the campaign launch rally last night:

“My research found that wherever privatisation increased, deaths from preventable causes also increased. It is clear that there is a connection there.

“I am grateful to everyone that is doing something about this – you are saving lives.”

Whether you live in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, your local NHS leaders need to know that you’ve had enough of the deaths and the outsourcing.

Demand that your local health leaders save lives now – sign the petition

This fight in your local NHS is totally winnable. We just need to mobilise thousands of people in your area to add their voices to this demand.

They simply cannot ignore thousands of voices.

That is how we are going to win. And we have won before.

We’ve worked with Keep Our NHS Public campaigners in London to force local NHS leaders to kick American multi-national company Centene out of multiple GP surgeries. 

We’ve worked with Save Our NHS campaigners in Bath to get Virgin Care removed from their local NHS board.

Together with you we got the NHS in 11 regions to pledge to ban private companies from their boards.

We can win – YOU can win – if we make our voices heard in our thousands.

Make your voice heard now by signing the petition

We are so excited about this campaign because we know that when we come together and fight, nothing and no one can stop us winning.

Sign the petition and share it with your friends and family. And if you can do more, sign up HERE to receive leaflets from us to distribute to houses on your street.

Thank you for everything you do to protect our NHS from privatisation. 

Cat, Alice, Johnbosco, Matthew, Kate – the We Own It team’

‘We Own It’ Meeting Yesterday to Defend the NHS – A Brief Review

The pro-nationalisation, pro-NHS movement ‘We Own It’ held a Zoom meeting yesterday about the need to defend the health service from the Tory’s pernicious ongoing privatisation and discuss the demonstrations and protests they were organisations. It was hosted by the very well-informed and genial John Bosco and had a range of excellent speakers. It was to last from 6 pm to 7. 30, but I left after 50 minutes. This review thus necessarily does not cover the full event and all its speakers. Those I heard were Kate Osborne MP, Ben Goodair, the scientist behind the research showing that privatisation and outsourcing is actively killing people, Ron Mendel, an activist from my home city of Bristol and Zack Palansky, the deputy leader of the Green Party and member of the London assembly. And what they had to say was chilling.

Kate Osborne reminded us that a few years ago, Jeremy Hunt sold off the blood department of the NHS to the investment company, Bane, which then sold it on for a tidy sum. As a result, there’s a crisis in the blood section of the NHS, which has been forced to issue an ember alert. As for present health secretary, Therese Coffey, she is actively campaigning for the cash-starved NHS to get less money. She urged people to expose the false narrative that private industry is aiding the NHS. It isn’t. And to show how desperate conditions are for workers in the health service, one quarter of NHS trusts are running food banks for their own staff.

Ben Goodair’s work showing that outsourcing has actively produced excess deaths was published in the Lancet. Much of his talk was about the methodology they used to research this. He stated that one in ten patients in the health service is now being treated by a private healthcare company. He and his colleagues looked at the impact of privatisation by examining the use of private companies hired by the CCGs, the collections of doctors that Blair set up to control doctors’ spending. Not all CCGs used private healthcare companies. Many don’t, or only use to them to a small extent. But the study found that where they were used extensively by the CCGs, deaths rose significantly the next year.

Ron Mendel is an American, now living in my fair, home city. He has personal experience of the immense cost to the patient of private healthcare. He was speaking from Israel and Palestine, where he has been trying to work for peace between the two communities. He revealed that in Bristol, the Integrated Care Trust is currently running at a £36 million deficit. According to research by the University of Glasgow, between 2012 and 2019 there were 344,000 excess deaths.

Zack Palansky made it very clear that he and his party were fully behind the principles of the NHS: that it should be universal, publicly funded and free at the point of use. He stated that dental care needed to be defended as well as health – an important point now that, thanks to Thatcher’s privatisation and its consequences, millions of people don’t have an NHS dentist. He also pointed out that in 2015 Catherine Lucas, their leader, had launched an NHS reinstatement bill in the Commons to reverse the privatisation of the NHS. The Green Party, he declared, would reverse the 2012 Health and Social Care Bill. This is the pernicious bit of legislation that exempts the government from providing healthcare, the fundamental duty of the health secretary when it was founded by Nye Bevan. And he also stated that party leaders and MPs should join workers on picket lines.

We Own It as a whole stressed, they were not party-political and stated that many Tory voters wanted the privatisation stopped and the health service properly funded. But they recognised that most of the people campaigning were on the left. As well as urging their supporters to sign their petition against privatisation, they are also planning to set up a mass demonstration against it in Parliament Square on 25th February next year. They want at least 557 people there, to represent the 557 people who have needlessly died due to NHS privatisation.

The meeting was extremely well attended. There were 315 people there, from all over the country, and part of the organisers’ message was that these should be active in small groups in their local areas. If people are able to do this, it means that the organisation’s impact may be greater than those numbers suggest.

We Own It are doing great, important work as the NHS comes under attack from the Tories. We need the lie that outsourcing and privatisation is helping the health service to be absolutely refuted and political leaders who are willing to stop and reverse it.