Since Keep Our NHS Public was founded in 2005, we have been fighting for an NHS that is free at the point of need, publicly provided, funded and accountable. In the article below, Lucy Nichols examines how we can continue to fight for this in 2025, after almost a year of Labour Government
We are in a moment of extreme crisis, not just in our NHS but also in social care and the public sector more broadly. As Keep Our NHS Public has argued before, the Government is not fulfilling its promises when it comes to the NHS. As a result, the health service is under increasing strain, even with the extra funding announced in the last spending review.
This means that as NHS activists, we have our work cut out. In its 20th year, Keep Our NHS Public is fighting as hard as ever for an NHS that is free at the point of need, publicly provided, funded and accountable.
Pushing back against government attacks on the NHS
Wes Streeting has made it clear that his idea of fixing the NHS centres on introducing more of the market, more outsourcing, and more privatisation, and by using ‘spare capacity’ in the private sector to ease the strain on the NHS.
We are now in a situation with the lowest ever public satisfaction with the NHS, impossibly long waiting lists, totally inadequate mental health, dentistry, primary care services, more maternity care scandals, an enormous staffing crisis, and an estimated 16,600 totally avoidable deaths each year due to delays in urgent care. In addition, there are 130,000 vacancies in the social care sector, which is also in a state of crisis.
The Government is responding to this in all the wrong ways.
There is no spare capacity in the private sector that doesn’t take from the NHS. Private healthcare relies on doctors, nurses and technicians taken from the NHS, and the diversion of NHS funding to profit-taking companies.
Very clear evidence of the negative impact is found in the example of NHS ophthalmology. Earlier this month we wrote:
The estimated amount of profit from NHS contracts leaking out to five private eye care companies in 2023/24 was £169 million. The profit margin for these companies was a staggering 32%, and out of the £536 million paid to them by the NHS in 2023/24, £68 million was used to pay interest on the high-cost loans taken out by the private equity investors to purchase these companies. CHPI has previously demonstrated how cataract surgery contracts have distorted clinical priorities, summed up as ‘very mild cataracts getting surgery at the expense of other patients going blind’. This has left NHS eye care departments as a ‘poor service for poor people’ while significantly undermining the training of the ophthalmology workforce.
This is just one example amongst many of how privatisation undermines the NHS and patient care.
We are also expecting tens of thousands of job cuts as a result of NHS England being abolished, as well as the restructuring of ICBs and the instruction to trusts to make savings from widescale staff reductions.
The pay rise the government has offered doctors and nurses is clearly a step in the right direction, but likely to be challenged as inadequate by unions. As it is unfunded, trusts will struggle financially to an even greater degree.
A national project of austerity and anti-immigration
In addition to this, many of Labour’s other policies will put more pressure on the NHS.
The cuts to disability benefits will affect 1.3 million people, who will lose on average £4,500 a year. The Government has previously blamed the increase in PIP payouts on young people with ADHD and mental health illnesses, but it is mainly older people, especially women, who will be affected by the cuts.
This will have several implications for the NHS, including increased A&E visits; higher demand for mental health services; higher costs as people are more likely to need long-term care. It is hard to discharge people from hospital if they don’t have anywhere safe to go home to. It will also put further strain on GP services.
Keir Starmer also wants to dramatically reduce the number of people coming to the UK to work in the NHS and social care, particularly as care workers. The NHS and social care would collapse without overseas workers. Around 20% of all NHS workers and 30% of adult care workers are from abroad.
In addition to his ‘Island of strangers’ being untrue, this will, for obvious reasons, put both social care and the NHS under more strain, in many similar ways as the Pip cuts. You can’t safely discharge patients if there is no care package in place; lack of beds will have knock-on effect for A&Es and elective surgeries; there may be a higher cost for councils who must turn to agency workers to plug gaps; many people (mainly women) will be forced to give up jobs to care for relatives.
The changes to immigration law that the Government is bringing in will have knock-on effects for the NHS; another reason why NHS activists should be opposing this. KONP therefore understands the need for a united anti-austerity, anti-racist movement that can effectively campaign on these issues.
This is why we joined the People’s Assembly and many other organisations on Saturday 7 June in Central London, on the very strong ‘No to Austerity 2.0’ national demonstration. This demonstration acted as a re-launch for the People’s Assembly, and here they announced another national demonstration at the next Labour Party Conference in Liverpool on Sunday 28th September. We will join this crucial demonstration, firstly to add the voices of NHS campaigners to this pressure on the Government, and secondly because the NHS must be central to this growing anti-austerity movement.
By having as many NHS banners as possible on this demonstration and playing a significant role in building it, we will be proving both to the Government and to our friends on the demonstration that, in our 20th year, Keep Our NHS Public is as committed as ever to the fight to save our NHS.
Supporting striking NHS workers
KONP has been proud to stand with health workers since we were founded in 2005. In the last year we have supported a variety of NHS strikes as staff have stood up against cuts, outsourcing and low pay. This includes the ESNEFT strike over outsourcing facilities workers, and the strike around dangerously low staffing levels and funding at Greater Manchester Mental Health.
We can also expect more strikes in the NHS. On a national level, nurses and resident (formerly Junior) doctors could be striking soon. At a local level, facilities workers at St Helier’s and Epsom Hospitals are mounting a campaign for fair pay and working conditions.
It is important we stand with health workers: the crisis in the NHS affects staff as much as it does patients. In pushing for a better NHS, free of private involvement, we are also calling for better pay and conditions for all NHS staff.
We therefore continue to work together, through Heath Campaigns Together and the SOS NHS coalition, with the health unions and NHS staff organisations, like NHS Workers Say No.
Fighting back for the NHS and social care
The Labour Party has copied and intensified the Conservatives’ ideological war on the National Health Service, and is now far from the Labour Party of Aneurin Bevan, which created the NHS in 1948.
They have failed to deliver on many of their manifesto promises and not responded to many of the recommendations in the Darzi report, despite commissioning it to inform their plans. In addition to scapegoating managers and alleged bureaucracy, they have welcomed more privatisation without even the checks and balances provided by (the soon to be abolished) NHS England.
The Labour Government is building on the work of previous governments to undermine the NHS. It is subtle. Where people are receiving care, it is largely still free at the point of use, and although the NHS is publicly funded, an increasing amount of public funding is going to the private sector. In effect, sections of NHS services, despite public funding, are no longer publicly provided. We will continue to campaign against this.
The crisis in the NHS does not mean that the NHS is broken beyond repair. With the right political will, we can have an NHS that is, once again, amongst the best healthcare providers in the world. Our role is to convince the public, and the Government, of this.
NHS in crisis: Emergency Appeal
Keep Our NHS Public has been the leading campaign against privatisation and underfunding of the NHS for 20 years. However, without urgent financial help our ability to campaign is under threat. Please donate today and in our 20th anniversary year, help us keep our NHS public.
Ask anyone what are our top priorities, The vast majority will indicate health and education and we are being failed by Starmer and his cronies. Kier Hardie will be turning in his grave. We can find billion for defence but zilch for the sick and elderly. Its a scandal,
Ask the people of Gaza what their priorities would be, if they were given a choice at the present time! A NHS would be of secondary importance to Defence when they are seeing life and environment utterly destroyed. War may be considered to be inevitable whilst mankind exists. Trying to destroy Keir Starmer and the Government after one year in office is evidence of the dark side of human nature.
This Labour government is exceeding my worst expectations. Guns not butter, planes not health care. What an offering!
Than you for this Campaign. What can be said. How did Labour politicians enable a leader who is fighting against everything the British people (and others) value. Labour have no idea how to keep Britain “great.” One of the worst issues is the health of our nation. A farmer told us yesterday Starmer has sided with Bill Gates and declared animal produce has to reduce 50% by 2030 and thereafter to nil. This will cause more harm and more illness for the NHS to pick up. Train our own doctors and nurses and prioritise service to those who are living in the UK legally.