Members of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) on the picket line outside London’s St Thomas’ Hospital as they go on strike for the first time over pay
MORE than 50 human rights and civil liberties groups slammed the Tory government’s new anti-strike legislation today as an attack on the fundamental right to take industrial action.
An open letter, penned by groups including Liberty, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam, said the proposals would allow “a further significant and unjustified intrusion by the state into the freedom of association and assembly.”
Ministers prepared to rush the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill through its final stages in the Commons last night, claiming public services need safeguarding amid the biggest strike wave in decades.
UK Extinction Rebellion joined with other groups on Saturday’s Dirty Water national day of action protesting UK government’s policy of open sewers throughout UK.
Targets to clean up the majority of England’s rivers, lakes and coastal waters suffering from a cocktail of agricultural and sewage pollution have been pushed back from 2027 to 2063.
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Until Brexit the UK government was signed up to the water framework directive, which required countries to make sure all their waters achieved “good” chemical and ecological status by 2027 at the latest. The UK government later reduced the target to 75% of waterways reaching the single test of good ecological status by 2027 at the latest. The target for the majority of waterways to achieve good status in both chemical and ecological tests has now been pushed back to 2063, according to the documents.
By 2027, only 4% of waters are currently on track to be in good overall condition.
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Surfers Against Sewage and Extinction Rebellion protests in St Agnes, Perranporth, Truro and Charlestown which unveiled spoof Blue Plaques to the MPs and Conservative Government who allowed raw sewage to be dumped in the sea (Image: Barry West)Surfers Against Sewage and Extinction Rebellion protests in St Agnes, Perranporth, Truro and Charlestown which unveiled spoof Blue Plaques to the MPs and Conservative Government who allowed raw sewage to be dumped in the sea (Image: Surfers Against Sewage)XR’s pink boat and Dirty Water protestor at Godalming
MILLIONS of people in Britain, including 3.9 million children and 1.7m pensioners, were in living in poverty even before the cost-of-living crisis hit, damning figures revealed today.
Around 20 per cent of the population, equating to 13.4m people, were living in poverty in 2020/21, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s annual poverty report found.
The report warned that there are elements in the benefits system that increase poverty, including the two-child limit, five-week wait for universal credit payments and unaffordable debt deductions.
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About 7.2m people are skipping meals, showers and heating, it found.
Sunak met with the CEOs of several UK private health corporations in Number 10 in December. | No 10 Downing Street
Rishi Sunak hosted a meeting with seven bosses from the UK’s biggest private health companies to discuss how to tackle the NHS backlog, openDemocracy can reveal.
Campaigners have raised concerns that the close involvement of private healthcare corporations in the government’s response to the NHS crisis will benefit shareholders at the expense of public investment.
The government announced the creation of the Elective Recovery Taskforce in December to provide advice on how to “turbocharge NHS recovery from the pandemic, reduce waiting times for patients and eliminate waits for routine care of over a year by 2025”.
At the time, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) refused to give openDemocracy details of the group’s members, or say who had attended its launch at Number 10 led by the PM and health secretary Steve Barclay in December.
A guestlist for the event, obtained by openDemocracy through a Freedom of Information request, reveals that half a dozen CEOs from private health firms were in attendance.
Guests included the chief execs of the UK’s two largest private hospital operators: Paolo Pieri, the chief exec of Circle Health Group, and Justin Ash, who heads up Spire Healthcare. Also present was Jim Easton, the chief executive of Practice Plus Group, the NHS’s top private healthcare provider.
They were joined by David Hare, the chief executive of Independent Healthcare Provider Network, a lobby group that represents for-profit and not-for-profit private health organisations including Bupa and HCA, one of the biggest healthcare facility companies in the US.
Private health tycoons have wined and dined senior ministers while cashing in on NHS contracts
The private healthcare executives, which also included CEOs from Horder Healthcare, Newmedica, InHealth and Medefer, outnumbered the five NHS England directors invited to the event.
DHSC said it could not provide openDemocracy with minutes from the meeting because none were taken, and refused to share any papers handed out to attendees.
Separately, the government quietly published a list of members of the Elective Recovery Taskforce on Monday. The 16-person group includes DHSC ministers, six NHS bosses, and Hare.
Other members include Bill Morgan, a private healthcare lobbyist whose past clients included Virgin Care, who was appointed a Number 10 adviser in November, and Paul Manning, an NHS consultant surgeon who is also chief medical officer for Circle Healthcare.
The government said the role of the task force would be to “shape proposals for how the healthcare system can make use of all resources at its disposal, further tackling the backlog caused by the Covid-19 pandemic”. It will conclude its work in March.
Last week, the prime minister said he had signed up to an NHS GP after the Guardian reported that he had registered with a private clinic in west London that charges £250 for a consultation.
Tony O’Sullivan, a retired consultant paediatrician and co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public, told openDemocracy: “The head parasites are at the table to maximise future extraction of NHS funds.”
He added: “This is an important disclosure extracted from the government proving the direction of travel – to continue disinvesting in the NHS and increase its enforced dependence on private health care.
“The private sector was bailed out during Covid, has a lucrative four-year £10bn deal ongoing and is also in a position to earn massive profits from patients forced to go privately to avoid NHS queues of 7.2 million.”
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