How did Care UK and Virgin Care end up with contracts to run GP services in Calderdale? And after Calderdale CCG completes its review of GP services and community unplanned care (ie urgent care that isn’t A&E), how many more privatised GP services are we going to end up with?
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Not that you’d realise it from outward appearances, but Richard Branson’s private health care company Virgin Care has contracts with Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group to run a dermatology clinic in Halifax, as well as three General Practice centres that go under the name of Meadow Dale Group Practice – one in Elland, one in Ovenden and one in Sowerby Bridge.
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An example of the increasingly intimate merger of government and corporate interests, former New Labour Health Secretary Alan Milburn recently joined Price Waterhouse Coopers to head up a board overseeing the consultancy and accountancy giant’s private health care business, which is moving in on the NHS now that the Health and Social Care Act is in place.
Milburn is also chairman of the European Advisory Board of Bridgepoint Capital, the vulture fund investors behind Care UK, which runs the Todmorden and Halifax walk in health centres and also provides diagnostic services for Calderdale NHS.
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Calderdale Save Our Services has purchased 1,000 of the Keep Our NHS Public cards that people can fill in and ask their GP to attach to their medical records.
If anyone wants some, please let Pete Keal know at calderdalesosc@gmail.com
Thanks to local campaigning, the two GP centres run by Care UK (one in Todmorden and one in Halifax) will remain open until September, when Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) aims to have completed its review of how to provide primary and community unplanned health care (ie urgent care that isn’t A& E).
Care UK has been at the front of the queue for NHS privatisations. It was acquired by vulture fund company Bridgepoint in 2010, and according to Corporate Watch,
“carries huge debt, avoids tax, siphons money off to its private equity owners, and has been accused of negligence and abuse.”
This was the first Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group (CCCG) meeting after the House of Lords approved the NHS ‘section 75’ regulations on 24th April. These hotly-opposed regulations open up the NHS to far more private sector competition. Caroline Molloy, writing on the Open Democracy website, states that
“overturning the NHS Privatisation Regulations was always going to be tough. Nonetheless, the spectacle of Lords with private healthcare interests, voting them through, raises fundamental questions about our democracy.”
Now that these new NHS privatisation regulations are law, how can local campaigners work effectively to keep our NHS public? Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS Group is looking for ways to work with Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to protect Calderdale NHS from privatisation. This report is based on notes from Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS Group.
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Calderdale NHS 38 Degrees members attended the Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) meeting in F Mill, Dean Clough, on Thursday 11th April. This is their report:
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Craig Whittaker has refused to sign Early Day Motion 1188. EDM 1188 asks for the annullment of the ‘new’ regulations (SI 2013/500) under Section 75 of the Health and Social Care Act – the ones that provide a stealth route to privatising the NHS. The advice of David Lock, a Queen’s Counsel employed by campaigning organisation 38 Degrees, is that the new regulations (the National Health Service (Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition) (No. 2) Regulations 2013),
“are likely to have the effect of both permitting and promoting the transfer of NHS services to private sector.”
This is a briefing from Keep Our NHS Public (KONP). It basically asks you to write to LibDem and Cross-bench peers asap,asking them to block the second set of NHS privatisation regulations. It provides examples of standard letters for each type of peer. It also asks you to write to your MP asking them to support Early Day Motion (EDM) 1188, if they haven’t already done so.
I’m doing these things today, I hope you will too.
It explains the background to these campaign requests.
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