NHS Fightback is holding a Zoom meeting on Monday May 19, at 7 p.m. to oppose Labour’s plans to gut and privatise the National Health Service. All healthcare workers, patients and their families are invited to attend.

On March 19, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced the abolition of NHS England. Aping Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency in the United States, Starmer declared “the world’s biggest quango” was being axed to cut “waste and inefficiency”.

One day later, Streeting announced that all 42 NHS integrated care boards—which allocate NHS budgets locally and commission services—would be expected to cut running costs by half.

Streeting instructed NHS England’s new CEO Jim Mackey to oversee a “financial reset”, “putting an end to the deficit-by-default culture that has consumed our health service”. Streeting would do the same at the Department of Health and Social Care, “going through budgets line by line”, he pledged.

Labour’s announcements were immediately hailed by right-wing media outlets. Murdoch’s Sun declared Streeting had “done what the Tories should have sorted long ago” and that Starmer was “living the Tories’ dream.”

Less than two months later, Labour’s plans for the dismantling of the NHS are being put into practice.

“Thinking the unthinkable”

Mackey told the Medical Journalists’ Association this Thursday that the government had “maxed out” on the funds it was prepared to provide the NHS. “It is really now about [the NHS] delivering better value for money, getting more change, delivering on getting back to reasonable productivity levels.”

He has ordered hospitals in England to make unprecedented cuts this financial year to avoid a projected £6.6 billion deficit. Trusts say the resulting “efficiency savings” amount to 12 percent of their entire budget.

Saffron Cordery, interim chief executive of NHS Providers (which represents NHS trusts) said that trusts are having to “think the previously unthinkable” to meet the savings demanded under Streeting’s whip.

On May 19, the BBC and Guardian reported results of a survey of 160 NHS Trust leaders which found they are planning to shrink their workforce by up to 1,500 positions each.

In addition:

• 47 percent were cutting services and another 43 percent were considering doing so.
• 37 percent were cutting clinical posts and a further 40 percent may follow suit.
• 26 percent were closing some services and 55 percent more may do so.

At North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust (NWAFT), a staff video call uploaded to YouTube last month exposed the extent of the cuts and their impact on patient care. “NHS workers described ‘chaos’ on wards, financial hardship and excessive workloads”, the BBC reported.

Around 400 NHS staff joined the call, with one frontline worker challenging senior management: “Have any of you been on the wards at the moment and seen the chaos?” They added: “All the staff are feeling the same. You go home with this tremendous sense of guilt.”

The trust has been instructed to save £73.5 million this year, around 10 percent of their annual budget.

The same cuts are being implemented everywhere.

Dorset Hospitals Trust: a test case

An example of Labour’s cost-cutting and privatisation agenda is on display at the NHS Dorset Hospitals Trust which has announced plans to transfer more than 1,300 staff into a newly created subsidiary company (SubCo).

The move affects essential workers in housekeeping, catering, portering, estates, and health and safety roles, many of whom are among the lowest-paid staff in the NHS.

Despite promises that transferred staff will retain their NHS contracts and pensions, the creation of a separate legal entity exposes them to worsening pay and conditions, with trust bosses admitting its formation is to “help improve efficiency and provide services that are affordable…”

Subsidiary companies were created in the NHS in 2006 during Tony Blair’s Labour government. A back-door route to privatisation, they flourished during 14 years of Tory-led governments from 2010. By March 2018, 42 NHS Foundation Trusts had either set up, or were in the process of setting up, SubCos. A year later there were over 65.

The Health Service Journal found that “Trusts are regularly denying staff employed by their wholly owned subsidiary companies access to the NHS pension and providing them with schemes which are significantly less generous.” It noted, “Some offered pensions with just 3 per cent employer contribution, compared to 20.68 per cent on AfC [Agenda for Change]”.

A catering worker at Dorset HealthCare NHS Trust told NHS Fightback: “We’ve been told we’ll have to sign new contracts with SubCo by September this year.

“We’ve made it clear—we’re not signing. But management warned that anyone with over two years’ service can apply for redundancy if they refuse, and those who don’t sign will lose their jobs. That’s not a choice—it’s blackmail.

“We’re all angry about what’s happening. And it’s not just here—I’ve heard that Southampton hospitals are also trying to shift staff into private companies. This is a national issue. We need to stand together and fight back.”

Staff anger toward these plans is growing. Yet Unison and other health unions are doing everything in their power to keep their members in the dark, and to divide and suppress a collective struggle against Labour’s scorched earth measures.

A rank-and-file strategy

At Dorset NHS Trust, Unison has organised no ballot for industrial action to fight the government’s plans. Instead, workers received a WhatsApp chat message from Unison reps proposing a three-stage plan consisting of 1) a protest during days off; 2) a work to rule; followed by 3) consideration of strike action as a last step.

NHS FightBack calls on workers to reject this bankrupt policy and to take the lead themselves.

Only through collective resistance can this assault on NHS workers—and the principles of a publicly owned and operated health service—be stopped. Staff must prepare for a united and determined fightback based on a socialist strategy.

Labour’s frontal assault on the NHS is being justified as necessary to pay for rearmament and war. Starmer has pledged to increase military spending to 3 percent of GDP and has called for a “Coalition of the Willing” with “boots on the ground and planes in the air” against Russia.

NHS FightBack says: Billions for health and patient care, not rearmament and war! No fight to defend the NHS can be successful without challenging the grip of the financial oligarchy over society. The claim that there is “no money” for the NHS is a lie!

Conditions exist for a powerful fightback by health workers against the Labour government’s frontal assault on the NHS. A network of rank-and-file committees is needed, linking together all of us across our respective workplaces and disciplines, to share information and discuss a common strategy to fight.

Join our meeting on Monday May 19, at 7 p.m., and encourage your colleagues to attend. Register for the NHS FightBack Zoom meeting here.