Door opens to NHS privatisation in Wirral

Below is the speech I gave at last night's full council meeting on the new Integrated Commissioning Hub for Wirral.  I've written about this previously, particularly in terms of the threat it poses to privatisation of health services locally.

Although some 13 Labour councillors agreed with me that this agreement should be referred back to the relevant cabinet committee and several more abstained, a combination of the remaining Labour councillors with Conservative and Lib Dem support, voted the deal through.

This clearly demonstrates the extent of the split in the Labour group on this issue.

You can watch the debate via the council's web stream. My contribution starts at 1.45.23

Two months ago, along with Cllr Sullivan, I warned council that creating an accountable care organisation in Wirral was opening the door to privatisation of health services in Wirral.

 

If council, as I believe many Labour councillors wanted to, had accepted our advice, we could have paused, avoided the call-in, and spent the past two months addressing the serious flaws in these arrangements.

Instead, as the Lib Dem amendment refers, we are told time is short and we need to press on regardless of the long term implications.

I don't believe that's good enough for the people we represent.

And there was ample evidence in the call-in debate to support my concerns.

In particular, Yvonne Nolan's evidence was extremely clear that:

•    this model paves the way for privatisation

•    joint working between council social care and the NHS was entirely possible without pooled funding

•    that, given these concerns and the financial risks to the council, she would have advised caution

To me, that is a polite way of saying "you are making a big mistake here"

Another witness, Dr Derek Timmins went further saying the signing of this agreement "will lead to increasing privatisation of our nhs and more cuts in services"

This all fits in to the wider agenda of privatisation by stealth – creating single organisations with pooled budgets and weak democratic oversight that are ripe private interests to colonise.

In the face of these warnings, the bland reassurance from the cabinet member that this will not lead to privatisation lacks credibility.

In the circumstances and given the limited powers of council to act tonight, the only responsible course of action is to reject the amendment, refer the entire decision back to the cabinet committee and urge them, in the strongest possible terms, to think again.