Wes Streeting

Starmer plans to ‘embed profit-seeking parasites’ into NHS, campaigners warn

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmer-plans-to-embed-profit-seeking-parasites-into-nhs-campaigners-warn

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (centre) and Health Secretary Wes Streeting (left), with NHS CEO Amanda Pritchard (right) during a visit to Elective Orthopaedic Centre in Epsom, Surrey, to highlight his ‘plan for change’ commitments on health, January 6, 2025

TARGETING a 20 per cent increase in the use of the private sector to cut waiting lists risks “permanently embedding the profit-taking parasite” into the health service, campaigners have warned.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer claimed he is “not interested in putting ideology before patients” as he unveiled the NHS’s growing use of private healthcare in a major speech today.

Private operators will receive an extra £2.5 billion a year in government funding under his new elective reform plan to address a waiting list for planned care on which 6.4 million people are waiting for 7.5m treatments.

This amounts to as many as a million extra appointments, scans and operations a year by the for-profit sector, with the official aim of patients no longer having to wait more than 18 weeks for non-urgent hospital care by spring 2029.

During his speech in Surrey, the prime minister acknowledged some people will “not like” expansion of the private sector in the NHS, but said: “To cut waiting times as dramatically as possible, our approach must be totally unburdened by dogma.”

Keep Our NHS Public co-chair Dr Tony O’Sullivan said: “The commitment of Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting to long-term contracts with the private sector threatens to permanently embed the profit-taking parasite in the NHS host, undermining the prospect of NHS recovery as a publicly provided universal service meeting the needs of the population.

“Starmer says he will ‘not let ideology stand in the way’ but it is their ideological choice that will stand in the way of sustainable NHS recovery.

“Safe and prompt community care will only be delivered through an urgent expansion of skilled staff.”

We Own It lead campaigner Johnbosco Nwogbo said: “Using the private sector to cut waiting lists was the centrepiece of the Conservative government’s Elective Recovery Plan in February 2022, but waiting lists kept going up.

“Starmer’s ‘new’ initiative looks suspiciously similar to the Conservatives’ failed plan.

“Hospitals are crumbling while the NHS is haemorrhaging at least £10m a week to private shareholder profits — money which could build a new operating theatre every week.

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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmer-plans-to-embed-profit-seeking-parasites-into-nhs-campaigners-warn

Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the "hard times".
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.

Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.

Continue ReadingStarmer plans to ‘embed profit-seeking parasites’ into NHS, campaigners warn

The wrong people listened to on puberty blockers ban

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https://archive.ph/20241217095323/https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24799355.wrong-people-listened-puberty-blockers-ban/#selection-1751.0-1751.97

Labour have enacted the first piece of anti-LGBT legislation to come from Westminster in 36 years

IN indefinitely extending the ban on puberty blockers for trans young people, Labour have enacted the first piece of anti-LGBT legislation to come from Westminster in 36 years.

And like the ban on teaching of LGBTQ+ identities enacted in 1988, it is grounded in little more than a moral panic that harms young people.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting claims that the decision to extend the Conservative Party’s ban on something which is a reversible and safe means to give young people the time and space to decide what is right for them was taken after receiving expert advice. But the Government’s own consultation process tells another story.

If, as the Government’s proponents are so quick to say, we must take the heat out of the so-called transgender debate, the route to doing so must surely be through expert opinion and by listening to the experiences of young trans people themselves.

READ MORE: ‘UK complicity in Israeli war crimes not without consequence’, Labour warned

Yet skipping through the list of names invited to respond to the Government’s targeted consultation on the indefinite ban, a number of chosen invitees are objectively the last people who should be near such a consultation – anti-trans organisations, conversion therapy advocates and groups with ties to far-right American evangelism.

The list of groups and organisations invited to take part included charity the LGB Alliance, which was labelled by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) as a hate group in 2022.

GPAHE – which was formed by two former members of the respected US Southern Poverty Law Center – highlighted the LGB Alliance among other groups such as the Official Proud Boys Ireland and the Iona Institute as setting out to “demean, harass, and inspire violence against people based on their identity traits”.

The Government also invited the Bayswater Support Group to respond – a favourite go-to of the far right that pushes conversion therapy and advocates abuse toward trans youth “for their own good”.

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https://archive.ph/20241217095323/https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24799355.wrong-people-listened-puberty-blockers-ban/#selection-1751.0-1751.97

Continue ReadingThe wrong people listened to on puberty blockers ban

HOW ISRAEL FUNDS UK PARLIAMENTARY STAFF

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Aides to Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting took Israel lobby funding. (Photo: Stefan Rousseau via Alamy)

Israel is quietly financing assistants of British MPs, Declassified has found.

Israel has paid for at least a dozen UK parliamentary staff to visit the country on special delegations in the last five years.

A further 18 staffers have accepted funding or hospitality from pro-Israel lobby organisations in Britain such as Labour Friends of Israel and We Believe in Israel.

Several worked for MPs in Keir Starmer’s front bench team, including shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting and shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson.

Our investigation found how the Israeli embassy in London, its ministry of foreign affairs and associated lobby groups seek to influence not only MPs but also their assistants.

Declassified previously revealed that one in four British MPs in the last parliament accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups or individuals. 

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Israel lobby organisations have also sought to gain backdoor influence by funding, meeting, and providing hospitality to ministers’ special advisers, known as SPADs.

Special advisers are exempt from the Civil Service Code’s requirement of political impartiality. 

Governmental departments are therefore [not?] required to publish the gifts and hospitality that they receive.

Deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden accepted funding from CFI when he was David Cameron’s SPAD in 2014. 

Dowden was a prospective parliamentary candidate for Hertsmere at that time.

CFI paid for a special adviser to Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude to travel to Israel that same year, while in 2015 another four Downing Street special advisers received hospitality from CFI.

The group has continued to lobby SPADs in the prime minister’s and deputy PM’s office, as well as the leader of the House of Lords.

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Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

Continue ReadingHOW ISRAEL FUNDS UK PARLIAMENTARY STAFF

Starmer swerves questions on Gaza, Corbyn and public ownership

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Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmer-swerves-questions-on-gaza-corbyn-and-public-ownership

SHIFTY Sir Keir Starmer was left squirming today as he dodged election questions about his past conduct and present and future plans.

The lacklustre Labour leader failed to come clean on Gaza, Jeremy Corbyn or his volte-face on public ownership.

Speaking in a radio phone-in, Sir Keir also repeated shadow health secretary Wes Streeting’s controversial call for junior doctors to call off their strike action.

“Don’t strike during the election campaign because we’re very close now to the opportunity for a different approach with a Labour government if we get over the line,” he said.

“So don’t strike because that causes all sorts of issues.”

On the Gaza crisis Sir Keir waffled when asked whether a Labour government would stop arms sales to Israel.

The lawyer said that he would have to “look at the legal advice” and hold “a review.”

He also refused to agree that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide.

“You need the evidence in front of you to make a decision,” he slithered, as if the whole world has not seen an amplitude of such evidence over the last nine months.

The Labour leader was also uncomfortable when he was put on the spot as to whether he would have served in a Corbyn-led cabinet had Labour won the 2017 or 2019 general elections.

He repeated his argument that he “did not think Labour would win” and insisted that the question was “hypothetical,” a silly answer because it was evident to everyone at the time that he would have done.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmer-swerves-questions-on-gaza-corbyn-and-public-ownership

Continue ReadingStarmer swerves questions on Gaza, Corbyn and public ownership

Jeremy Corbyn warns against Labour’s plans to ‘hollow out our NHS’

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/jeremy-corbyn-warns-against-labours-plans-hollow-out-our-nhs

Image of Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the Labour Party

JEREMY CORBYN will warn against Labour’s plans to “hollow out our NHS by continuing Tory underfunding and privatisation” at an emergency rally today.

The former Labour leader will join healthcare workers and campaigners outside Archway Tube station in his Islington North constituency, warning that “more austerity and privatisation is not the answer” to the NHS crisis.

His intervention comes two days after the launch of the Labour manifesto, which failed to rule out cuts to the health service and dropped the party’s previous promise that the “NHS is not for sale.”

Mr Corbyn is standing as an independent against Labour candidate Praful Nargund after being blocked from representing the party, which has now expelled him.

At the rally, the lifelong socialist is expected to say: “Unlike Labour and the Tories, I do not believe the expansion of the private sector is the answer to the NHS crisis.

“I’m proud to have spent my life campaigning with my community for universal public healthcare. With your support, that is what I’ll continue to do.

“In Islington North, we have a message to anybody looking to promote private healthcare: keep your hands off our NHS.”

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/jeremy-corbyn-warns-against-labours-plans-hollow-out-our-nhs

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Continue ReadingJeremy Corbyn warns against Labour’s plans to ‘hollow out our NHS’