The Government is planning the biggest re-organisation of the NHS since it began in 1948.



It is unnecessary, unwanted, wasteful and damaging – and threatens to end the NHS as we know it. Only last year, the Government promised people they wouldn’t do it. Many thousands of people have already called on the Government to stop.

But they are ploughing on, ignoring public and professional opinion, out of touch with Britain.  We need to make the Government listen before it’s too late.



Sign the Drop the Bill petition opposite or find out more here

The Save Our Health Service march is on Saturday 25th June,

Gather at Nevill near the Green. (Wheelchair users are invited to join the march in the bottle neck.)

Marchers will form up at 09.30 & move off  along Spital Road, passing the hospital & down St Annes Hill, High St, School Hill to a rally in the precinct where union , service users & disabled protestors will address the crowd.

Details will follow

Lewes Labour is concerned about the future of our much loved Lewes Victoria Hospital in these difficult times and with a major revolution planned for the NHS. Even our local MP, Norman Baker, found time away from voting for the sale of our forests, the removal of the Education Maintenance Allowance and other Coalition attacks on public services, to complain about the lack of consultation in transferring responsibility for the Victoria to another Primary Health Care Trust. Labour members and campaigners in Lewes wanted to find out more and so some of us attended the public meeting between the NHS East Sussex South Downs and Weald Trust and NHS

Hastings and Rother Trust held in Friar’s walk in February. However all we found were confusing answers. We were told that in view of the proposed demise of Primary Health Care Trusts in the Coalition’s recent White Paper on Health that no-one could guarantee the future of our community hospital beyond the end of March next year. You know only Labour can help protect the NHS. The coalition has put price competition at the heart of the NHS when it should be the patient! And so we find despite his double talk Mr Baker supporting the proposed break- up of the NHS into multiple competing businesses. Which for us In Lewes means we will need to fight hard to protect our local Hospital.

NHS waiting times are rising as financial strain on the healthcare system begins to show, according to a report.

New figures from health charity The King’s Fund reveal that NHS waiting times are at their highest level for three years, with nearly 15% of hospital inpatients waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment in February 2011.

The report highlights a steady increase in waiting times for hospital treatment since the Government relaxed the 18-week target in June 2010, said the charity.

Professor John Appleby, chief economist at The King’s Fund, said: “With hospital waiting times rising, the NHS faces a considerable challenge in maintaining performance as the financial squeeze begins to bite.”

He warned that hospitals no longer have a target for waiting times in place but instead “a vague commitment”.

“The trouble is it’s hard to see what the mechanisms are to keep that target low. I think the issue is how far they will continue to rise and at what point does the public start to notice,” he added.

The figures show waiting times in accident and emergency departments are also steadily climbing with the proportion of patients waiting more than four hours increasing.

Although this percentage tends to be larger in the third quarter of each year, the latest peak is the highest since 2004/5.

The King’s Fund said a panel of 26 NHS finance directors were questioned at a time of tightening budgets within the NHS to find £20 billion in productivity improvements by 2015.

Researchers also analysed data published by the Department of Health.

So not only are we in line to lose our local hospital The Lewes Victoria but find we are slowly sliding back to pre 1997 waiting times under the Tory Lib-dems.

By giving blood, we want to improve the lives of others. Money and profit margins have no place in this transaction. It’s up to us to stop plans to let big business profit from our blood.

Joy sansom writes:

I knew childbirth wouldn’t be easy – but after 20 hours of labour and an emergency caesarean I was in real trouble. My skin was transparent because I’d lost so much blood. And without the three units of blood I received the night my daughter Eve was born, I wouldn’t be here today.

It seems amazing that GPs who this year under a small amont of pressure could not organise the promotion distribution and application of the flu jab are being asked to take on the organisation and commissioning of services across the whole NHS.

Its yet to be seen, but it looks to us like it might spell disaster.  Groups across the NHS from the BMA to health service Unions have come out against the reorganisation of the NHS under the Coalitions new Bill about to be voted on in Parliament.

Think about your GP, think about GPs on mass, are these really the people that should be commissioning a 80% of services across the NHS, do they really have a grasp of what goes on.  Wouldn’t you rather your GP gave this kind of time to you as a patient rather than trying to manage a muli million pound budget and care for you as a patient.

This is  a money saving exercise and an ideological move to change the NHS.

Along with GPs  the rest the public health services are going to be under the management of your local county councillor, many people we meet do not even know who that counciller is. Meanwhile hundreds of top health managers, commissioners and thousands of staff with health administration skills are being let go and lost.

Will it effect services,? Lets be honest it may well improve some, but then others will be lost to the cut throat business of commercialising health.  Its not that money should not or does not already motivate the health sector.  Think about it most of us go to work for the money and whilst we admire the dedication of health professionals we would not deny them good wages.  But where money becomes the measure in public service then the likelihood is we will lose other services entirely, if they are seen within large health corps and large hospitals as effecting the bottom line.

The problem is the NHS costs vast amounts of money to sustain, wouldn’t it be better to give over the day to day running of services rather than commissioning of services to doctors, nurses and other clinicians.  If instead of large faceless corporations the very people offering you a service also had a bigger say in running it, that might make some sense.

Whether in hospitals or the community, creating small organisations, smaller hospitals and community services; wouldn’t it be better to bring an element of mutualism to public service altogether so we can all have ownership and a stake in our public services. These evolutionary steps were already being undertaken under Labour, but now its all change as the reorganisation put forward by this Tory-led government puts of health and our health service in danger.  

At The Labour Conference Gordon Brown has not just made a committment to the NHS but a committment to improve the NHS to make it a personal health service rather than just The National Health Service. I think His ideas on cleanliness are the start of even better things to come.

The NHS: Better with Labour