Labour Conference Report 2024 – Mark Ladbrooke a SHA delegate
The conference, as you would expect, had a celebratory tone, the party having won power after 14 years. Huge damage was done to the NHS and society in general through this period of Tory and Lib Dem rule. Because of this the conference was at times a victory rally rather than a working conference. Dissenters were shushed at best and ejected at worst.
Ministers spoke at length about their plans and early achievements, their entrance was preceded by a lengthy adulatory warm up speech. Standing ovations were thick on the ground.
And there are undoubtedly achievements, starting with a new deal for working people which begins to roll back some anti union laws. Protection Zones around abortion clinics will come into force from the end of October. 1000 more GPs are now being employed – treating patients. The dispute of resident doctors (junior doctors) has been resolved – for now. A New Deal for Care Professionals and a Fair Pay Agreement is promised but not yet a National Care Service. A good union motion on public procurement was passed and some powerful motions from Women’s Conference.
There were some rule changes, perhaps the most significant for the SHA is that the deliberations of the National Policy Forum will no longer be put to the vote by conference.
NHS issues were shifted to the final morning of the conference. The motion proposed by the Socialist Health Association on Physician Associates – who are severely deskilled staff covering the role of a medic were sidelined despite repeated appeals including from the conference floor, Our motion addressing the need for additional funding to deal with winter pressures was rejected in internal committees. Only 3 speakers on health were permitted from delegates.
The pitch from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, was, to say the least, problematic. He promoted his vision of a health market, The NHS would become a broker of services rather than the provider of a high quality care itself. This means there would be less healthcare available if corporates take a slice of profit, (this can already been seen clearly with regards to cataract surgery). And when public bodies need to audit and monitor private companies an additional layer of expensive bureaucracy will be needed.
The NHS as a mere broker funded by our taxes but contracting with private bodies will be a giant £182bn cash cow for corporations here and from across the world. Perhaps in the first year they will undercut local NHS hospitals cherry picking lucrative contracts, when NHS provider bodies lose the contract and funding they will be disbanded, their staff transferred out to the corporations or will made redundant. Then the following period the corporations will double or treble their fees to the NHS broker, the public service competitor will have gone!
This mess of competing interests is exactly what Aneurin Bevan abolished in 1948 to create a rational, planned, high quality system which delivers health care efficiently and compassionately and to a high standard across the country. It is not sentimental or romantic to support this system. If properly funded it delivers at scale both efficiently and effectively. The idea that the healthcare needs of the whole population can be served any other way is simply fantasy.
Our former President, Julian Tudor Hart (picture above), in his much quoted ‘inverse care law’ pointed to inequalities exacerbated by the market. His comments are still true.
SHA delegates and our broader team were delighted to work with the campaign to save Liverpool Women’s Hospital, support WeOwnIt in lobbying for the NHS, organise with colleagues in the Socialist Educational Association a successful fringe event to expose the risks to public services through marketisation. Chillingly Dr Emma Runswick, a leading figure in the BMA.pointed out that already some 13% of appointments for GPs were going to the private sector. There is fuller information about fringe events here.
Perhaps most desperately urgent is the situation in Palestine. We participated in numerous fringe events and the major demonstration. The slaughter of civilians must stop. The targetting of health workers is a war crime. Not a single bullet or bomb should be sent from Britain in support of these never ending atrocities.
An important and hugely positive outcome from Labour conference is the increasing alliances the Socialist Health Association is making with the trade unions who have the membership and political weight to challenge the more outlandish ideas. And to strengthen us further please join the SHA – we will campaign inside the Labour Party and with our allies on the streets in every town and city.
Following motion from UNITE and CWU was backed by SHA delegates.
An Economy for the Future
Conference notes that workers and communities voted for change – a better future, not just better management and not cuts to the winter fuel allowance.
The Prime Minister’s speech, delivered in Downing Street on the 27th of August 2024, stated that the upcoming budget was “going to be painful” and warned voters to “accept short-term pain for long-term good”.
Fourteen years of Tory austerity has devastated Britain. Our schools, our NHS, our prisons- every single public service has been slashed by the Conservatives project of public destruction. Alongside this, profiteering has flourished, short-term profits are favoured over long-term investment and working people have paid the price through real-terms wage cuts.
For so long, workers have been told that if they work hard, they can have a decent life and access well-functioning public services- with the guarantee that their children will be better off. Austerity has destroyed this promise.
Britain cannot wait for growth, nor turn back to failed austerity.
We need a vision where pensioners are not the first to face a new wave of cuts and those that profited from decades of deregulation finally help to rebuild Britain.
Tory austerity left a black hole worth hundreds of billions in our public services.
The decade before the pandemic, saw day-to-day health spending at 18% below the EU14 average, and NHS waiting lists are now at record highs.
Public sector pay is down 19% in real terms since 2010, and we have hundreds of thousands of unfilled vacancies. Decades without industrial planning have left a public investment gap of £500 billion
below the OECD average since 2000.
Net zero cannot be delivered without more money and we cannot ask workers to pay for it with their jobs.
Conference recognises that a new economic settlement is needed to rebuild our country in the interest of working people. A Labour government cannot be held back by an economic dogma that restricts real investment and asks working people and pensioners to bear the brunt of cuts while wealth accumulates at the top of society.
Conference resolves that Labour will address this in the October budget and will
commit to:
- Reverse the introduction of means-testing for the Winter Fuel Allowance
- Ending fiscal rules which prevent borrowing to invest
- Commit to public services and infrastructure, ensuring any public expenditure
gaps, at a minimum, are restored through taxing wealth and that there are no
further cuts to welfare provision for working people and pensioners. - Introducing a wealth tax on the top 1%, an excess profits tax, equalise capital
gains tax with income tax and apply national insurance to investment income - Delivering the investment necessary for a workers’ transition to Net Zero
Mover: Unite
Seconder: Communication Workers Union
The motion below was the health motion passed by conference. We were unable to insert a section on PAs but even if we had been able to do so the motion is inadequate in many ways. Its misrepresentation of the principles of the NHS is striking. It is not a mere broker – commissioner.
Health Mission
Conference notes that:
New official data, as of August 2024, shows 7.6 million on an NHS waiting list, with over 300,000 patients waiting longer than 52 weeks.
This Labour Government inherits an NHS that is broken, after 14 years of Conservative mismanagement in England and 17 years of SNP mismanagement in Scotland.
Conference welcomes:
The commitments set out in the Mental Health Bill and Tobacco and Vapes Bill to reduce pressure on our NHS and improve public health. A full and frank assessment of the state of the NHS that Labour inherits, noting that diagnosing the scale of the problem is essential in treating it.
Conference calls on the Labour Party to:
Tackle the crisis in the NHS waiting list through delivering on the manifesto pledge to deliver 40,000 NHS appointments every week, during evenings and weekends.
Invest in the technology and equipment needed to build an NHS fit for the future through doubling the number of CT and MRI scanners, allowing the NHS to catch cancer and other conditions earlier.
Recruit and train the NHS staff needed, including the manifesto commitment to recruit 8,500 additional mental health staff.
Steadfastly protect the founding principles of the NHS, a comprehensive, free at the point of use service with access based on clinical need, not the individual’s ability to pay.
Mover: Ilford North CLP
Seconder: Norwich South CLP