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’ Celebrate Win in Getting Centene Out of NHS

We Own It are a pro-NHS organisation dedicated to getting the parasites of the private health industry out of the NHS and reversing the privatisation of this greatest of our country’s institutions. Centene are an American healthcare company to whom the Tories plan to hand many of our GP surgeries. A month or so ago I went to an online Zoom meeting about the threat Centene present with speakers that included MPs, local councillors and doctors. Centene has previously acquired doctor’s surgeries in the north of England. Their management of them was dreadful. Services were cut, and I believe a certain number of patients were even left without a surgery altogether thanks to the private healthcare company’s closures. A Spanish medical man, working in the NHS, told of the colossal ineptitude of Centene’s management of healthcare in Valencia. This was so egregious that the company was thrown out of the Spanish healthcare system despite the considerable personal contacts it enjoyed with Conservative Spanish politicos. Now these profiteers are seeking to expand their grasp on the British healthcare system. We Own It report that, thanks to pressure from their members, North Central London healthcare authority have decided to kick Centene out of two GPs surgeries in Islington by July next year. But they also appeal for further help in letter writing campaigns against Centene’s attempts to acquire other surgeries in London.

The email runs

“You’ve just won another incredible victory in the fight to get Centene out of our local GP practices.

Centene is a profit-greedy American company that took over 49 NHS GP practices in February this year. Their track record shows a company that puts profits before people at every opportunity. 

And with your donations, your time, your actions, social media posts and everything you’ve done, you’ve stood up to them many times since then. 

In April, through your efforts and the incredible work we did alongside Hammersmith and Fulham Save Our NHS, their contract renewal for a local surgery in Hammersmith was cut from 5 years to just 2 years – with stricter performance conditions.

Now, after months of pressure, North Central London health leaders have just decided to get Centene out of two Islington GP surgeries as soon as July next year.

This is incredible news. And you made that happen. 

This is your win. 

Collective pressure works, even when it feels like we’re up against it.

Local We Own It supporters in Islington alongside Islington Keep Our NHS Public worked hard to mount pressure on their local health leaders.

They wrote hundreds of letters to local health leaders, wrote articles in their local newspapers, protested and held a well-attended community meeting at which the local councillors and MPs expressed opposition to Centene.

Their work, along with what you did on a national level, is responsible for this win.

We still have to keep an eye on this win to make sure local health leaders don’t sneak Centene back in through the back door.

But for now, you should bask in your victory.

Your fight to get Centene kicked out of our local GP surgeries continues. 

In June, government inspectors declared 3 Centene-run surgeries in Newham “Inadequate”, despite declaring it “Good” under the local GPs that ran them previously. We need to get them kicked out of these surgeries. You can join a letter-writing session for this if you live in the area.

Two further Centene contracts for surgeries in Brent and Harrow are expiring soon and we must pressure local health leaders not to renew them. Join a letter-writing session for this if you live in the area.

But this is not just a London fight. Just as your support from all across the UK made these wins possible, we are fighting to get Centene kicked out of our NHS everywhere.

Thank you so much for all that you have done toward this victory. We couldn’t do any of this work without you.

Cat, Alice, Zana, Anna, Matthew, Johnbosco – the We Own It team

PS: You can read more about this local victory over Centene on our website blog. Please share the blog as widely as possible.“

This is excellent news and demonstrates what people can do in the face of the government’s determination to privatise the NHS. I don’t live in London, and so cannot join their letter writing campaigns against Centene in those areas. If any of the readers of this blog do, you might consider joining these campaigns.

Centene and the other private healthcare companies have not improved the NHS in contrast to the lies and blather put out by free market propagandists in the Tory party and the Labour right. Rather they have cut services, laid off staff and made conditions worse for those who remain in their employ in order to make a profit and give their board their bloated salaries and a handsome dividend for their shareholders. The result is always worse healthcare and more public expense, as it is has been shown that giving state services over to private healthcare contracts raises costs by 6 per cent.

Get Centene and the other profiteers out of the NHS!

Protests Planned Saturday against the Privatisation of the NHS

I went to an amazingly great pro-NHS zoom meeting last night organised, I think, by the anti-NHS privatisation organisations We Own It and/or Keep Our NHS Public. The speakers included Dr. Louise Irvine and Antonio Perez-Iranzo, a Spanish doctor working in the NHS, who described how Centene, the private health care company that’s being given positions on NHS boards and allowed to take over doctors’ surgeries, has managed to wreck healthcare in his home country. They were so terrible that eventually the Valencian government was forced to take the service back inhouse and kick them out. Rabina Khan, a Lib Dem councillor in Tower Hamlets, talked about her experience of the poor service they delivered when they took over the traditional GP’s surgery at which she was a patient. She was particularly concerned about the effect of privatisation on the elderly, and on Black and Bangladeshi women. Another speaker told of the vastly poorer service they gave when they were given NHS contracts and acquired GPs’ surgeries in Nottingham. The final speaker was Jeremy Corbyn, introduced as the ‘best Prime Minister this country never had’. Absolutely. He provided more details on the continuing NHS privatisation, showing his absolutely and unfailing commitment to the great institution created by Nye Bevan. He reminded everyone that one he waved the documents showing this was going to happen in parliament and asked Johnson about it, prime ministerial liar called him a liar. But he was right, and if, anything, understated the case. There was also time given for ordinary folks to ask their questions and give their experiences of the destruction of the NHS by these parasites.

In every case, the story was the same. Centene are given the contracts without warning, over the heads of local people, patients and even other doctors. Notification of the change comes from a bland, corporate letter and people are urged to get on Zoom for further information. This is a problem for older people, those not on the internet or who have problems using it, and people for whom English is not their primary language. Centene is a for-profit American health insurance company. Already big, it became massive in America with the introduction of Obamacare. It states in its corporate literature that it is only interested in making a profit, and that if this doesn’t happen, it will divest itself of those loss-making interests. Louise Irvine stated that, as a doctor, you don’t think of making a profit, even though since the inception of the NHS doctors are actually private businessmen, who contract in to the NHS. The only way to make a profit is to reduce costs. Which means sacking people and actually providing a worse service by reducing the amount of care given. In Nottingham, when Centene took over the service, they dispersed 3,000 of the 11,000 patients in their newly acquired GPs’ surgeries to others.

They are purely in it for the money, the profits of which go outside this country to their American shareholders.

Keep Our NHS Public is planning a demonstration against the privatisation of the NHS In London on Saturday, 3rd July 2021. This also includes issues like patient safety, and pay justice. They are going to assemble outside UCH on Euston Road, NWI at 12.00 before marching to parliament square. There are other protests also planned elsewhere in the country for the same day. Details of them can be found at their website https://keepournhspublic.com/ They also recommended people looking at an essay on this privatisation by a member of the Socialist Health Alliance, whose website is https://sochealth.co.uk.

They are naturally extremely keen for people to join their organisation or set up their own. Whatever we do, we have to organise to show the strength of opposition to this privatisation. They state it will be a long struggle, but people have succeeded in getting contracts taken away from the profiteers Serco, Circle Health and others.

The message is clear: Get rid of Centene and the other private companies profiting from the NHS. Get Boris out, and a proper government in, one committed to ending NHS privatisation.

And that does not include the Labour Blairites, who were as keen to privatise the NHS as their Tory heroes.

We Own It’s Public Zoom Meeting Monday Against NHS Privatisation

We Own It is an organisation campaigning for the renationalisation of public industries. It is particularly against the Tories’ ongoing privatisation of the NHS. I got this email from them yesterday about a public zoom meeting they’re organising on Monday against the Tories’ decision to hand over a number of doctor’s surgeries to Centene, a private healthcare company. This is going to be the thin end of the wedge, leading to further GP’s surgeries being privatised unless stopped. The email runs

“Our NHS turns 73 this year. 

As part of this year’s NHS birthday, a coalition of NHS campaign groups – including We Own It – is organising a public meeting on stopping the private takeover of NHS GP surgeries. 

Can you join the online (ZOOM) public meeting at 6pm on Monday, 28th June?

Sign up to attend the public meeting

You may know, David, that Centene, an American healthcare corporation, recently took over 49 NHS GP surgeries. 

This kind of takeover of our NHS GP surgeries shows that the government is intent on putting our NHS into the hands of profiteers. 

This would explain their lack of action to get Centene out.

At the public meeting you will learn more about the danger these takeovers pose to our NHS and also how you can be part of the fightback.

Please join the public meeting whether you are in England, Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland.

At the meeting you will hear from:

• Jeremy Corbyn – MP for Islington North (his constituency has a Centene surgery)
• Dr. Louise Irvine – Keep Our NHS Public
• Richard Buckwell – Chair Nottingham & Notts Keep Our NHS Public
• Cllr. Rabina Khan – Tower Hamlets Councillor (Liberal Democrats)

There will also be a speaker from Spain to speak about the effects of Centene in their country.

I want to attend the public meeting

Our NHS was founded on the principle of equality: equal access to healthcare for everyone – from the rich to the poor.  That is why the NHS was established as a public healthcare system, free at the point of use and funded through general taxation. Our local GP surgeries are the first point of contact with the NHS for over 80% of us. But with companies like Centene now getting their hands on our NHS GP surgeries, many of them risk being closed if they are not profitable. Centene has already closed surgeries in Harlow (Essex), Leicester and Camden for not being profitable.  And by doing so, they are depriving the communities access to readily available care. It is so important that we continue to fight back and stop these takeovers.

Sign up to attend the public meeting

As we celebrate the 73rd anniversary of our NHS, your involvement in events like this, David, is so valued. The truth is that without the fight that you have put on over the years, there may no longer be an NHS.

Please sign up to attend the public meeting to stop Centene’s takeover of NHS GP surgeries.

Thank you so much for the incredible work you’ve been doing to protect our NHS.

Cat, Alice, Pascale, Chris, Zana, Johnbosco – the We Own It team

PS: You still have an opportunity to fund action and campaigning against the government’s plan to allow private companies, like Virgin, to sit on ICS boards. Integrated Care Systems (ICS) boards will make decisions about how NHS budgets are spent in our local areas. Sign up to donate £5 a month or whatever you can afford. Every penny helps in the fight to stop this privatisation of our NHS.“

Of the speakers, Jeremy Corbyn needs no introduction as the former, and vilely maligned leader of the Labour party, but it will be interesting to hear from a medical doctor, Louise Irvine, and the Spanish speaker about how Centene is wrecking their country’s healthcare system, all in the name of profit.

I haven’t donated to the organisation, but I do intend to go to the Virtual meeting. I think the time is 6.00 – 7.30 pm on Monday, 28th June 2021. If you feel the same, you may also want to do the same to protect this most vital of British institutions.

How Can I Trust Keir Starmer to Protect the NHS When Blair Wanted to Privatise It?

The parties have been running their election broadcasts this week in the run up to the local, elected mayoral and other elections in May. I caught a bit of Labour’s the other night, and wasn’t impressed. The piece I glimpsed consisted of Starmer sitting in front of the camera, urging people to vote Labour to protect it from the Tories’ privatisation. And the Tories are privatising the NHS by stealth, all under the cover of bringing in best practice from the private sector. And the Lib Dems have been exactly the same. They were the Tories’ partners in David Cameron’s wretched coalition government, which carried on the privatisations. Nick Clegg did nothing to stop it. Indeed, he gave every assistance to the Tories and seemed to be fully behind the handing over hospitals and doctor’s surgeries to private enterprise to run. Just as the Liberals and SDP were way back in 1987, when the two allied parties had declared that it didn’t matter whether doctors and hospitals were public or private, provided that the treatment was free. Except that the Tory privatisation of the NHS will definitely not retain free treatment at the point of use, as provided by the terms of the NHS’ establishment. The Tories wish to turn the NHS into a fully private system funded by private medical insurance like the American health system.

There are Labour MPs who are fighting tooth and nail to protect the NHS. I’m thinking here of the people on the Labour left, such as Jeremy Corbyn, Richard Burgon, Diane Abbott, Rosina Allin-Khan. I also believe that others from the Labour right are doing so. At one meeting of my constituency party here in south Bristol, our local MP Karen Smyth said she joined the Labour party and became an MP because she was so appalled at what Cameron and co. were doing to the Health Service.

But I find Starmer’s claim that he will protect our NHS much less than credible. He’s an arch-Blairite, who has spent his tenure as leader so far in conjunction with the wretched NEC trying to purge the party of left-wingers and socialists. This has involved all the usual trumped-up, fake charges of anti-Semitism. And sometimes there’s no explanation given at all, like when the NEC barred three of leading Labour contenders for elected mayor of Liverpool. Worse than that, he has broken all of his leadership promises. He claimed that he would continue to uphold Labour’s manifesto promises of returning the utilities to state ownership, reversing the NHS’ privatisation and properly funding it, strengthening the welfare state and workers’ rights and restoring power to the unions. But in practice he hasn’t done any of that. It might put off all those rich donors he’s trying to attract. He has shown no real opposition to Johnson’s government, and what little he has shown has been glaringly opportunistic. So opportunistic, in fact, that right-wing windbag and broadcasting egomaniac, Julia Hartley-Brewer, asked him if there was anything in fact he stood for when he appeared on her wretched show on LBC radio.

And if this isn’t ominous enough, the fact remains that Tony Blair also went ahead with the right-wing programme of privatising the NHS. The polyclinics and health centres Blair set up were opened up to private management. He continued handing over doctors’ surgeries and hospitals to private healthcare firms. And the Community Care Groups, the groups of doctors which were supposed to manage local NHS doctors’ budgets, were granted the ability to buy in services from private sector companies, and raise money from the private sector. His Health Minister, Alan Milburn, wished the NHS to be reduced to a kitemark logo on services provided by private industry. And I fear Starmer will do exactly the same.

Brian Burden, one of the great commenters on this blog, posted this comment noting Starmer’s telling lack of opposition to another Tory appointment.

Hi, Beastrabban –

I refer you to p19 of the April 7 issue of Socialist Worker: Samantha Jones, formerly of Openrose Health, owned by US health insurance giant Centene Corporation, has recently been appointed a top adviser to Boris Johnson. Openrose took over scores of NHS GP surgeries earlier this year. Centene has faced a number of fraud and corruption law suits in USA. Socialist Worker believes that Johnson is moving towards the full privatisation of the NHS. Not a whisper from Starmer about any of this.

I wasn’t aware of this appointment, though I haven’t been paying much attention to the news recently. Not that I think it would be in the news. Ray Tallis and Jacky Davis have a whole chapter in their book, NHS – SOS to how the BBC has supported the privatisation of the Health Service. I’m not a fan of the former Socialist Workers’ Party, but I’ve no doubt they’re correct about this and are right to publicise it. And Starmer’s silence is telling.

I doubt very much that Starmer’s serious about protecting the NHS. And everyone else seems determined to privatise it with the exception of the much-reviled Labour left.

So forget the vile propaganda and smears against them and support the real people of principle who are standing up for this most precious of British institutions.