TGWU on warpath over NHS reform
The Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) yesterday slammed Government plans to reform so-called foundation hospitals.
In a no holds barred rebuff to Tony Blair and Health Secretary Alan Milburn, Jack Dromey, national organiser for the TGWU, adjudged the reforms to be Labour’s very own ‘poll tax’.
The union’s general secretary Bill Morris said the NHS was a ‘Labour flagship policy’ and as such ought to be protected against privatization policies.
‘I’m concerned that the proposals which will be debated next week could create a two-tier system.
‘What this is doing is to build a foundation for the Conservatives to come along and privatise and break up the National Health Service as we know it today: That is the issue, the preservation of the National Health Service in the longer-term,’ he stressed.
To embrace plans for foundation hospitals would be tantamount to ‘political madness’, he contended.
‘I genuinely believe that what we should be concentrating on is to make every single hospital up to that standard, but you don’t have to change the structure to do it; the Prime Care Trusts have worked and can work better,’ he insisted.
Mr. Blair, who turns 50 tomorrow, is faced with a possible major backbench rebellion over the issue. The Health and Social Care Bill is be debated in the House of Commons on Wednesday.
A motion attacking the very idea of foundation hospitals has already been signed by 133 Labour backbenchers.
The PM, writing in the Observer, said the Ministry of Health planned to radical overhaul the NHS’ organisation. It aims to transform every NHS hospital into a foundation trust – capable of controlling local budgets and finding extra funds from outside the NHS.
Mr. Blair wrote: ‘Our hope and intention is that all hospitals will become NHS foundation trusts within a short period of time,” Blair wrote in the paper.
‘Alan Milburn will announce this week that, by this autumn, every NHS hospital will have a target date for being able to become an NHS foundation trust within four or five years — and that the extra help and financial support will be provided to raise standards everywhere.
‘Far from being a betrayal of Labour values, they are based on the Labour principles of community, of involvement and democracy,’ he added.
Critics however are unconvinced. They argue the natural result will be division, privatisation and a two-tier service, impoverished across the board.
In a bid to ward off any politically embarrassing backbench agitation, Mr. Milburn on Tuesday is expected to announce £100 mn is to be set aside to improve standards in lower-rated hospitals in order to speed qualification for foundation status.
