Questions focused on the disastrous state of the health service, tax evasion by big business, why the finance sector had been preferred to productive industry, and why bonuses and greed couldn’t be controlled by the Tories or Lib Dems.   The audience were left full of questions about the failure of the current Government and wishing Rachel well in her new and demanding role.

Caption: Rachel Reeves and Jim Grant (Labour Group Leader) (Courtesy of O’Brian Media)

Labour’s solution to Osborne’s failed plan A and Cameron’s Tory laissez faire attitude to young people will be to tax bankers bonuses and create 100,000 jobs for young people.

People still fear for their job security as redundancies climb. The Office of National Statistics reports that there were 164,000 redundancies in September to November 2011, up 14,000 on the previous quarter and 5,000 on the year. When will Osborne ditch his plan A and accept that it isn’t working?

So why did Cameron veto a pact that most of the other EU members who werent in the Euro were prepared to sign?

Well,  one reason was that he didn’t like the proposed financial transaction tax.  Yet as the Archbishop of Canterbury said last month “the public is frustrated by the financial sector’s business as usual approach which is represented by still soaring bonuses and little visible change in banking practices while society as a whole pays for banks’ past errors and irresponsibility”.

The UK’s stamp duty, which taxes share purchases, already raises £3 billion a year, but a Financial Transaction Tax – or “Robin Hood Tax” of only 0.05% on transactions like stocks, bonds, foreign currency and derivatives would raise £250 billion a year globally, and at least £20 billion in the UK.  This is well-tested, cheap to implement and hard to avoid.  It was the tax that our European Socialist friends were pushing for on a coordinated basis across Europe.

Another element which Cameron objected to, and which Tory MEPs also voted against in European Parliament last month, is a regulation banning speculators ‘gambling’ with debt debt issued by the British government, the Eurozone countries, or by other EU Member States.  In recent months we seen these speculators making billions by trading European financial bonds that they dont even own.  Technically,  this means a ban on  ”naked” credit default swaps (CDS), which enable speculators to take out insurance against a failure by governments to pay their debts even if the speculators themselves do not actually own those government bonds. Rising demand for such contracts can push governments into financial trouble which then delivers a payout for speculators – even when the government was originally solvent.  Tories don’t want this to become law because it would threaten the bonuses of their friends in the City.

So, come off it!  The veto wasn’t an expression of Britain’s bulldog spirit.  Just Cameron playing poodle to his Banker buddies.

The Government is planning the biggest re-organisation of the NHS since it began in 1948.

It is unnecessary, unwanted, wasteful and damaging and threatens to end the NHS as we know it. Only last year, the Government promised people they wouldn’t do it. Many thousands of people have already called on the Government to stop.

But they are ploughing on, ignoring public and professional opinion, out of touch with Britain. We need to make the Government listen before it’s too late.

Sign the Drop the Bill petition at http://www.labour.org.uk/dropthebill and tweet this on twitter!

What this Bill means for the NHS

POSTCODE LOTTERY

The Bill will break up the NHS and create an unfair postcode lottery. With no national standards, there will be widespread variation in the treatments available on the NHS. In some areas, people may have to go private to get services available for free elsewhere.

LONGER WAITING TIMES

The Bill risks rises in waiting times and a two-tier NHS. It scraps the cap on hospitals treating private patients at the same time as watering down guarantees on NHS waiting times. This means local hospitals will be free to treat more private patients and make NHS patients wait longer.

PRIVATISATION

The Bill turns the NHS into a full-blown commercial market, putting competition before patient care. It allows private companies to cherry-pick quick profits, potentially forcing local hospitals to go bust. Hospitals could even be fined for working together.

DAMAGED DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP

The Bill undermines the bond of trust between doctors and patients. It creates conflicts of interest where financial incentives could interfere with medical decisions. GPs could even get a bonus for rationing your care.

WASTE

This Bill is wasting money and creating bureaucracy. It is unforgivable to spend £2 billion on a reckless re-organisation when the NHS needs every penny it can get for patient care. Nearly £1 billion is being wasted on pay-offs for managers, only for many of them to be re-employed as consultants.

Last week doctors in York were criticised for telling their patients that certain operations were no longer available on the NHS, and offering to provide these for a fee. This is the tip of the ice berg where the Tories are concerned of creeping privatisation of previously free NHS provision.

Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s new Shadow Health Secretary, has written to Andrew Lansley with a constructive offer to resolve the “dangerous stalemate” on NHS reform. He believes the financial challenge is the overriding priority for the NHS but that the Government’s contested top-down re-organisation is proving to be a dangerous and damaging distraction.

As the House of Lords gets ready to debate the Health Bill this week, Andy Burnham has urged the Government to withdraw its Bill. In return, he has pledged Labour’s support for developing true clinician-led commissioning in every locality in England – one of the key aims of Mr Lansley’s reforms. Labour believes that these reforms do not need legislation, and indeed could be implemented more quickly without it.

Andy Burnham’s approach offers a way ahead that everybody could unite behind. It would bring much-needed stability and would help the NHS save money on the costs of re-organisation. People would be encouraged to see the main parties setting aside differences and working together for the good of the NHS.

I hope the Coalition Government accepts Andy’s offer to work together and that they dump the bill even the BMA in Swindon is calling on the Government to pull back from its plans, as they fear the NHS in Swindon will be very badly hit by them. What a waste of money the Government is planning billions on a reorganisation that the medical profession doesn’t want and will mean worse services for local people.

It could come down to one or two votes. Together we can help tip the balance. If we show the Lords that the public want them to put Lansley’s plans under the microscope, we can convince wavering Lords to stand up to government pressure and vote the right way.

• These changes weren’t in any manifestos and the public has never had a chance to vote on them.
• These changes weren’t given proper scrutiny in the House of Commons so we need the House of Lords to look at them properly.

An urgent, people-powered petition can show the Lords that huge numbers of us want them to protect the NHS. Please add your name now by clicking here.

Photo Courtesy of UNISON

Despite the sham listening exercise, the Government’s changes to the NHS plans will still pave the way for a shift towards a US-style health system, where private companies profit at the expense of patient care.  Independent legal advice obtained by the pressure group 38 degrees has confirmed that:

• The Secretary of State’s legal duty to provide a health service will be scrapped, and a new ‘hands-off clause’ removes the government’s powers to oversee local consortia and guarantee the level of service wherever we live. We can expect increasing postcode lotteries and less ways to hold local consortia to account when services deteriorate. Responsibility for provision of healthcare services will lie with unelected commissioners who are only accountable to an undelected national quango.
• The NHS will be subject to UK and EU competition law – meaning that private health companies will be able to take new NHS “commissioning groups” to court if they don’t win contracts. “Any Qualified Provider” is can now bid for health care contracts, from any commissioning group, and the process is likely to be hugely complicated and costly (look at the railways and multiply hundreds of times). Scarce public money could be tied up in legal wrangles instead of hospital beds. Meanwhile, the legislation also lifts the cap on NHS hospitals filling beds with private patients.
• Medical treatment is hugely more expensive year by year, and we can ill afford the estimated cost of these NHS reforms of £3 billion (according to the British Medical Journal) – and that’s not counting the risks that “commissioning groups” don’t have procurement expertise and be taken to the cleaners in legal action from disgruntled private healthcare providers.
• Nothing in the legislation stops private companies being contracted to provide commissioning services to consortia and then awarding further contracts to themselves, or stops private companies poaching contracts in a way which undermines the ability of the NHS to deliver essential services like Intensive Care Units, A&E, emergency cover, teaching, training and research.