Dear SHA members,
Please consider me for a position on the SHA central council.
I am a GP in Hackney and have been campaigning for a publicly funded, publicly provided, publicly accountable NHS for many years. I am the vice chair of Doctors in Unite and also chair of Hackney South & Shoreditch CLP. Both these positions help to ensure that NHS campaigning remains high on the agenda of Unite and the Labour Party.
Along with other members of Hackney Keep Our NHS Public, we have come together with campaigners across NE London to oppose the NEL STP, now rebranded the NEL Health and Care Partnership. We have formed a group called NELSON- NEL Save our NHS. We have attended board meetings, scrutiny meetings, met with councillors, leafletted and held public meetings. We have challenged the very basis of the STP, to such an extent that we feel we were responsible for the name change!
The NHS is in meltdown, and as the march on 3rd February demanded, in the short term we need more funding, more staff and more beds. Despite the crisis, the Tory government is pressing ahead with the expensive top down upheavals of the STPs, ACOs with commercial procurements leading to tendering and privatisation of NHS services, and the sell offs of the Naylor report.
The SHA has an important role in helping the Labour Party to tackle this dire situation in the NHS once in power. To ensure the future of the NHS, and the evolution of well-coordinated care within the NHS and between the NHS and social care, marketisation and commercial contracts for NHS services must be ended, saving at least £10 billion a year which can be spent creating an integrated NHS. Composite motion 8 at the Labour Party conference outlined a vision for the future NHS which the SHA can help to achieve.
Thank you
Coral Jones