Workers Revolutionary Party - DEFEND HINCHINBROOKE HOSPITAL – 1,300 doctors, nurses, and health workers' jobs at stake

The News Line: News Saturday, 4 October 2008 DEFEND HINCHINBROOKE HOSPITAL – 1,300 doctors, nurses, and health workers' jobs at stake

NHS workers and their families marching to defend the service from the privateers

Doctors, nurses and health workers will take to the streets with local people today, Saturday 4 October, to defend the future of Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Cambridgeshire.

Hinchingbrooke Health Care Trust (HHCT) could become the first District General Hospital in England to be permanently ‘franchised out’ to private sector management, warned UNISON, the UK’s largest health union.

NHSTogether (an all NHS trade unions’ campaigning group), including UNISON Cambridge Health Branch, have organised for a demonstration against the proposals.

This is assembling at Riverside Park at 12 midday, before marching through Huntingdon town centre to a rally at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, commencing at 1.30pm.

The union is fighting plans that would see management of the hospital handed over to a private company, driving a huge wedge of privatisation into the heart of the NHS.

The plans would leave a massive question mark over the future of the Trust and access to vital health services for the 165,000 people in Hinchingbrooke Hospital’s catchment area.

In addition the future of the 1,300 doctors, nurses and health workers is in doubt.

UNISON’s Eastern Region has published ‘Up for Grabs’, a detailed response to proposals by NHS East of England to invite competitive bids for an ‘operating franchise’ to run Hinchingbrooke.

UNISON Regional Organiser Phil Green, said: ‘It is a scandal that the future of health services in this area are being discussed behind closed doors, excluding the press, the public and NHS staff, whose jobs may be at stake.

‘Options that are more likely to keep the hospital and its services intact, have been brushed aside without discussion by NHS East of England, while the highly controversial franchising option is being discussed in secret.

‘The views of local people and staff are being completely ignored.

‘It will be too late after key decisions have been made, to have a tokenistic “consultation”, effectively leaving local people with a fait accompli.

‘The Strategic Health Authority and Primary Care Trust must think again, and drop any further talk of franchising out the operation of management of HHCT and instead write off the back debts.’