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Morning Star Exclusive: Streeting urged to back New Deal for Workers and block £100m NHS privatisation bid

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/streeting-urged-back-new-deal-workers-nhs-staff-strike-over-ps100m-plus-outsourcing-bid

Health Secretary Wes Streeting arrives in Downing Street, London, for a Cabinet meeting, December 3, 2024

HEALTH Secretary Wes Streeting has been urged to honour the New Deal for Working People after failing to back a Unison NHS strike over a £100 million-plus privatisation plan.

More than 350 facilities workers are on a three-week walkout over East Suffolk and North Essex Foundation Trust (ESNEFT’s) plans to outsource their jobs.

Large NHS contracts such as this need Cabinet Office approval but Mr Streeting has said he will not intervene in the trust’s outsourcing bid despite Labour’s promise for the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation, a union source said.

His stance has attracted criticism from Labour MPs, Unison and NHS campaigners, with ESNEFT’s board of directors expected to rubber-stamp the outsourcing of their soft facilities management contract tomorrow.

Eastern Unison head of health Caroline Hennessy said: “Moving these essential teams out of the NHS is a false economy and goes against government pledges on insourcing.

“The trust has spent months trying to justify its ill-thought-out plans to privatise the jobs of these key staff and has failed to win any of the arguments.”

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/streeting-urged-back-new-deal-workers-nhs-staff-strike-over-ps100m-plus-outsourcing-bid

Post author:dizzy
Post published:4 December 2024
Post category:crap pretend Labour Labour Party Neo-liberalism NHS privatise Wes Streeting
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Eradicate child poverty in 20 years, coalition of children’s charities tell government

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/eradicate-child-poverty-20-years-coalition-childrens-charities-say

Stocks of food at the Trussell Trust Brent Foodbank, Neasden, London

A COALITION of 120 children’s charities today called for the complete eradication of child poverty in 20 years, increasing pressure for government to scrap the two-child benefit cap.

The End Child Poverty Coalition set out eight tests it said should be met by the government’s taskforce strategy if it is to succeed in tackling and ending child poverty.

Among them was that government must ultimately aim to halve child poverty in the next 10 years, and completely eradicate it in the next 20.

The coalition also said the two-child limit to benefit payments must be scrapped, estimating this could immediately lift around 300,000 children out of poverty, and that “further fundamental reform” to the social security system is needed.

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End Child Poverty Coalition chair Joseph Howes said: “Child poverty is a blight on our society and is also completely avoidable.

“If the government is serious about tackling and ultimately eradicating child poverty in this country, it needs to be bold and ambitious in its investments, including immediately scrapping the two-child limit to benefit payments.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/eradicate-child-poverty-20-years-coalition-childrens-charities-say

Post author:dizzy
Post published:4 December 2024
Post category:austerity Austerity 2 Cost of Living crisis crap pretend Labour Keir Starmer Labour Party politics Rachel Reeves
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NHS bosses reportedly worried about Starmer’s pledge to cut waiting lists

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/dec/02/cut-nhs-waiting-lists-keir-starmer

Keir Starmer and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who has promised an extra £22bn to help cut NHS waiting times, at University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire on 31 October. Photograph: Darren Staples/AP

NHS bosses are said to be privately concerned about Keir Starmer’s ambitious targets to cut waiting lists for routine operations, set to be announced later this week, which will also include specific targets on living standards and housebuilding.

The prime minister is expected on Thursday to set a target for 92% of routine operations and appointments in England to be carried out within 18 weeks by March 2029 – a goal that has not been achieved in almost a decade – the Times has reported.

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Most NHS trust bosses doubt the health service can restore key waiting times by 2029. A recent survey by the hospitals body NHS Providers found that 71% of the leaders overall, and 100% of those who run acute and ambulance trusts, thought it unlikely that they could make such progress that quickly.

The Society for Acute Medicine (SAM), which represents hospital doctors, said Starmer’s desire for a return to 92% of patients waiting a maximum of 18 weeks, four months before the end of this parliament, was “doomed” unless overstretched NHS urgent and emergency care services, such as A&E and ambulance services, were dramatically improved.

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/dec/02/cut-nhs-waiting-lists-keir-starmer

Post author:dizzy
Post published:4 December 2024
Post category:Keir Starmer Labour Party NHS politics Rachel Reeves
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Caroline Lucas responds to suggestion Labour set to shelve Natural History GCSE

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Caroline Lucas Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion. Official image by David Woolfall Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. — Caroline Lucas, Former Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion. Official image by David Woolfall Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Former Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, has given her reaction to suggestions that plans for a Natural History GCSE have been shelved because it is “seen as a Conservative party initiative.” Caroline was one of the key drivers of the GCSE in the last parliament. She said:

“I very much hope that Labour will look at this again, and appreciate both the popularity of the proposed Natural History GCSE, and the urgency of its introduction. The GCSE enjoys huge support, including from WWF and the Wildlife Trusts through to the Natural History Museum, the Association of School and College Leaders, 17 universities and thousands of young people themselves.

“It was a privilege to work with author and former BBC producer Mary Colwell, who has spearheaded the campaign, to persuade the last Government to agree to it. The curriculum has been prepared over several years by the OCR exam board, and it’s close to being ready to roll out. Stalling at this point would be a disaster, doing a massive disservice to students who desperately want to learn more about the natural world; failing to equip them with the skills of the naturalist which have increasingly been lost, and making it harder for all of us to restore and protect nature.

“Over the last half century, the world has lost 60% of the mass of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles – our education system urgently needs to rise to the challenge of reversing this shocking scale of loss.”