Last week, the NHS started to change. The laws which the government pushed through last year came into force. The changes would probably be even more alarming if it wasn’t for all the campaigning we’ve done together. But it’s all still pretty worrying.

With the changes now in force, we need to decide what we want to do next. What’s the priority? How can we best work together to defend the idea of a decent public health service we can rely on to look after us when we need it?

You can help us decide where the NHS campaign goes next. Please take two minutes to vote in a poll.

When the government finally got its changes through last year, 38 Degrees members were disappointed. But we voted to keep the campaign going. And since then, by working together, we’ve made a huge difference:

• Thousands of 38 Degrees members across the country have asked their local GPs to put patients first and keep the NHS public. We’ve already signed up groups of local GPs in the Midlands, south-west and London.
• We moved fast when we heard that the government was looking at a new tax dodge for the private health industry. Thousands of us wrote in to complain. The plan was dropped within hours!
• There’s been big problems with privatised GP out-of-hours care in places like Cornwall. So hundreds of thousands of us demanded an investigation into what happened there. An inquiry has now been launched by the influential Public Accounts Committee of MPs.
• Just last month, the government announced new rules which could force GPs to hand almost all health contracts to private companies. Over 350,000 of us signed the petition and wrote to our MPs. This helped force the government to withdraw the rules – a big win, though there’s still more to do.

It works because we all work together. So please help decide what we do next by taking the poll.

Should we be focusing on protecting the NHS from budget cuts? Stopping further privatisation? Supporting local campaigns like those against hospital closures? Or making sure that when managers fail to protect patient care, like in Mid Staffs, they’re held properly responsible?

We can do a lot, but we can’t do everything. So please vote!

Ken, Caroline, David, Linda, Anu and Ian in the waiting area at the Dept for Health

Yesterday 38 Degrees members and staff went to Westminster to meet with the health minister Norman Lamb MP to talk about our campaign against dodgy, pro-privatisation NHS regulations.  Over 350,000 members have now signed the petition against plans to force local doctors to open up almost all NHS services to private companies.  This petition and member-funded legal advice, helped push Norman Lamb to scrap the first version of these dodgy, pro-privatisation NHS regulations.

Linda delivering the petition to Health Minister Norman Lamb

38 Degrees member Linda who had previously written to members handed in the petition to Norman Lamb.

Norman and several staff from the Department of Health sat down with 38 Degrees to talk about the new regulations. We went in armed with the results of the survey taken by tens of thousands of 38 Degrees members which told us what you thought we should say.

Below is a video with feedback from the members present on how the meeting went as well as their thoughts on the campaign in general. This is very much our first impressions – as always the devil is in the detail. Norman Lamb offered some general assurances which in principle sounded promising, but we will need to follow up to get more details in writing before we decide what our next steps should be.

So, watch this space, as further feedback from the meeting and an email about the next steps in the campaign to save the NHS will be coming soon.

38 Degrees members had a big meeting today with Lib Dem Health Minister Norman Lamb. It was a chance for us to say what we think of his response to our campaign against dodgy, pro-privatisation NHS regulations.

38 Degrees brings together over 1 million of us – too many to fit in one meeting room! So only a few members were able to attend, but we were proud to get our members in the room to set out our case. To make sure we could give a fair representation of all our members’ views 38 Degrees sent out a short poll asking our members what to say. This meant 38 Degrees members’ views were truly represented to the Health Minister.

In the past few weeks, we’ve proved again that people-powered campaigning can work. Through a 350,000 signature petition, thousands of messages to MPs, and member-funded legal advice we helped push Norman Lamb to scrap the first version of these dodgy, pro-privatisation NHS regulations.

But that’s where things started getting more complicated. Norman Lamb rushed to publish a new version of the regulations. The new version does look a little bit better – but they are still nowhere near perfect.

So 38 Degrees member donations paid for two extra bits of legal advice. One, from an NHS law specialist, explains how Norman Lamb’s new version still doesn’t fully keep earlier promises not to impose privatisation. The other, from a competition law specialist, is a bit more positive but also says it may well have been impossible for these promises to ever be fully met.

That meant we had important choices to make about how we responded in the meeting with Norman Lamb. For example whether to prioritise pointing out ways in which the new version of the regulations could be improved? Or choosing to campaign for the regulations to be scrapped altogether?

It’s not usual for 38 Degrees to go into Westminster for a meeting with a Minister. Our power doesn’t come from being chummy with politicians. But on this occasion, we had a chance to put our views directly to the Minister just as he is deciding what to do next.

Norman Lamb will have to listen to us if he knows we speak on behalf of thousands and thousands of 38 Degrees members. And because we went in with the views all our members expressed in our poll our words carried this weight. Please continue to take the poll so that together we can take the NHS campaign forward.

38 Degrees members have been causing a stir in Brighton at the Lib Dem Spring Conference! Last Saturday 9th March, around 50 of us were outside the conference as the delegates walked in. Despite the cold, we flyered every Lib Dem in sight and chatted to quite a few of them.

Charles West, another 38 Degrees member, had put down an emergency motion to get NHS privatisation debated at the conference. We turned up in Brighton to support him, and to persuade as many Lib Dems as possible to vote for the motion – and trigger a debate on privatisation in front of Nick Clegg and health minister Norman Lamb.

The debate didn’t happen. Largely, that’s because senior Lib Dems didn’t want it to happen – and they put huge pressure on party members not to support the motion. But we got a great response from party activists, and together we made sure that NHS privatisation was a hot topic throughout the conference.

The campaign against the government’s continuing attempt to private our NHS is still going strong – you can sign the petition here.

Last week, almost 70,000 38 Degrees members emailed their MP about the government’s backdoor NHS privatisation plan. Members asked MPs to look at legal advice from leading NHS expert David Lock QC and sign up to an Early Day Motion to block the plans.

Lots of us got positive responses – but quite a few Conservative MPs included an identical paragraph in their replies, questioning the independence of 38 Degrees and the legal advice itself. They claimed that 38 Degrees is linked to the Labour party, and that the legal advice is biased. The paragraph in question is included at the bottom of this blog post.

These are quite serious allegations, so David Babbs, the executive director, wrote to every 38 Degrees member in these MPs’ constituencies to rebut the accusations and set the record straight.

Here’s David’s response:

‘Firstly, I would like to respond to your MP’s insinuation that 38 Degrees is linked to the Labour party. That’s totally untrue. 38 Degrees is independent of all political parties. 38 Degrees campaigns are are chosen by the members – we’re campaigning to protect the NHS from privatisation because that’s been voted a priority by 38 Degrees members. When the Labour Party were in government, 38 Degrees campaigns frequently challenged their policies too.

It’s true that David Lock QC was once a Labour MP for Wyre Forest between 1997 and 2001. But that’s not why he prepared the legal advice – he was hired to prepare the legal advice because he’s a preeminent expert in law relating to the NHS. As your MP will likely know, we cannot instruct a QC directly. We do so through our solicitors, who strongly recommended David Lock QC because of his great expertise in this area of law. Legal 500, which is a directory of legal practitioners, says of Mr Lock:

“David leads the public law group in No5 chambers and has a varied public law practice. He has extensive experience of acting for and against NHS bodies, local authorities and other public bodies in all aspects of public law. He is a recognised specialist in the law relating to the National Health Service and has many reported cases in this area.”

As your MP is also likely to know, barristers are bound by a code of ethics when preparing advice like this and wouldn’t be allowed to prepare “political propaganda”. David Lock QC’s professional opinion of the draft regulations was one based on his legal interpretation of their drafting – it is noteworthy than no objection has been raised of his interpretation by other lawyers.

I’m afraid your MP seems to be trying to use David Lock QC’s political history to distract attention away from the findings of his legal advice.’

38 Degrees members are rightly proud of our movement’s independence. So let’s stand up for it. If you have received a similar email from your MP, please feel free to point them to this blog post to clear the matter up.  Do let us know how they reply!

In better news, and following the campaigning of 38 Degrees members and others, the regulations in question were withdrawn by the government. In fact, the government’s statement went some way towards confirming David Lock’s advice that the regulations’ drafting went further than government had previously assured Parliament.

A new version of the regulations was published on Monday 12th March. We’re getting more legal advice right now. Keep your eyes on the blog and website to see how things develop!

PS This is the kind of wording which was being used by a lot of MPs in their emails to 38 Degrees members:

“I know that this interpretation has been circulated by 38 Degrees through its own legal advice. I thought you may be interested to know that the author of the 38 Degrees “independent” legal advice is former Labour MP, David Lock QC, who was the MP for Wyre Forest until losing to Dr Richard Taylor, the Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern candidate who ran to oppose the last Labour Government’s NHS policies.  Mr Lock remains active in Labour politics as Chair of the West Midlands Labour Finance and Industry Group. Indeed, while I fully appreciate your strong views on this particular issue, I did want to make you aware of the very close links that exist between 38 Degrees and the Labour Party.  One Co-founder contributes significantly to the Labour Party, its leader and its unofficial website ‘Left Foot Forward’ while another put himself forward as General Secretary of the Labour Party last year, and a director described himself as “dedicated to the Labour cause’.”

This email from Linda, a 38 Degrees member, was sent out to other 38 Degrees members today. The photograph above is of her and her baby Axel.

My name is Linda. I’m a long-standing 38 Degrees member, and I’m sending this email because I know first-hand why it matters so much to stop the privatisation of our NHS.

On Friday afternoon, I will deliver a copy of the petition against NHS privatisation to the Health Minister. When I hand the petition over, I will tell the minister about what happened to my baby. He died when he was just seven weeks old whilst receiving care from my privatised GP out-of-hours service.

Can you stand behind me when I deliver the petition, by adding your name quickly before Friday afternoon?

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/nhs-section75

Last week was a hard one for me. It was the inquest into the death of my baby son, Axel. He died last November from pneumonia. His illness went untreated despite repeated calls and visits over the course of five days to my NHS out-of-hours doctors’ service, which had been recently privatised.

I feel the inquest left many of the biggest questions unanswered – like what role NHS privatisation may have played in the mistakes which led to the death of my baby boy.

After hearing evidence of how that private health contractor had acted, I feel determined to do all I can to stop further privatisation of our NHS. That’s why I’ve decided to get more involved with 38 Degrees, and why I’m going to see the Health Minister this Friday. I’d really appreciate it if your name was on the petition when I meet him.

We had a bit of a breakthrough with this campaign yesterday. The government announced that because of all the pressure they would withdraw and rewrite their NHS privatisation regulations. The petition which I’d signed, along with 240,000 other 38 Degrees members, was mentioned in Parliament. That shows we can make a difference.

But I remember, as I’m sure that you will, that when the government promises to rewrite a plan, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the new version will be any better than the old one. We need to make sure they genuinely drop any attempt to force GPs to open up services to privatisation.

I would love to have as many signatures as possible by Friday afternoon when I visit the Health Minister. Please add your name now.

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/nhs-section75

It’s being called backdoor NHS privatisation. And if we want to stop it, what happens in Parliament this week is crucial. Some Labour, Lib Dem and Green MPs have tabled a motion demanding the NHS privatisation plan be immediately withdrawn. So far only 72 MPs have signed up. We need to make that number grow, and quickly.

In the last few hours, the legal advice paid for by thousands of 38 Degrees members’ donations has come in. The verdict seems clear. If the government forces through these new NHS privatisation rules, it will mean ministers breaking promises they made last year when they said doctors wouldn’t be forced to privatise everything.

We’ve got the proof we need to show MPs that the government is breaking the promises made when the NHS law was forced through. Now we need to make sure every MP reads it, to convince them to sign the motion demanding these new privatisation rules are stopped.

If MPs hear from thousands of us we can make sure that they sign up to block backdoor privatisation. Can you send an email asking them read our legal advice and oppose the plans?

The government says their ‘modernised’ NHS is supposed to be about giving more control to local doctors and communities. But under Jeremy Hunt’s new regulations, the government will force GPs to open up every part of local health services to private companies – whether or not it’s what they or local people want.

And it’s not just us saying this. On Sunday, the Observer newspaper reported an explosive letter from the head of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges to the health minister, outlining concerns that “healthcare will be disrupted and hospital services damaged as a result of time-consuming, disruptive and unnecessary tendering processes,” and that these new regulations are “at odds” with reassurances previously given to doctors.

These are hardly the voices of radicals or political opportunists – so what’s it going to take for MPs to sit up, take notice and admit that something’s not right here? Let’s seize this moment and ask our MPs to listen to doctors, patients, legal experts and concerned constituents, before they make a big mistake.

We can stop this now, if we try. In the past week we’ve grown our rapid-response petition to over 230,000 signatures. We’ve chipped in to pay for expert legal advice. Now let’s make the talk in the halls of Parliament on Monday be about how many voters are getting in touch about these broken promises. Together, we can help those wavering MPs to find some backbone, and help even the diehard supporters of privatisation to realise the game is up.

Email your MP today to say no to privatisation of the NHS.

Below is a blog written by David, a 38 Degrees member in Haringey. David and other local 38 Degrees members have recently convinced the Haringey CCG to adopt some important amendments into their constitution that will protect local NHS services from dangerous privatisation. 

On Thursday last week Haringey CCG made public their draft constitution, which included the 38 Degrees amendments on procurement and commissioning virtually word for word. The amendments mean the CCG has to consider whether it is ‘necessary, desirable or appropriate’ to invite competition when purchasing health services.

The victory comes after a couple of months of persistent pressure and lobbying. We first met as a group in early November last year. The turnout at the meeting was a good indication of the strength of feeling in Haringey – over 30 people turned up despite the limited meeting space and we had to be given a larger room. We learnt that 2252 Haringey residents had signed the 38 Degrees petition. We decided that a group of us would present the petition to the Chair of the CCG as soon as they would agree to meet us, which turned out to be the first week of January.

The meeting went well with the CCG Chair, Chief Officer and Lay Representative attending. They told us that as a membership organisation the CCG needed to consult their members, the local GPs, and  their lawyers before making any amendments to the constitution. They said they had to comply with EU competition legislation. Thanks to 38 Degrees, we were able to tell them that they had been produced by public law lawyers and had already been adopted by City & Hackney CCG. They said they would let us know what the outcome was by the end of February.

When they wrote to us following the meeting they were a bit vague about consulting with the GPs, and it turned out that they had finished the consultation with GPs in December. Therefore we felt we had been misled at the meeting. It was difficult to get information out of them so we decided to attend the meeting of CCG board at the end of January and table formal questions about the consultation process. We did a call out to people who attended the initial meeting to support those asking the questions. Again the response was fantastic with over 30 people attending. They had to search the building for more chairs as the six they had provided clearly wasn’t enough.

The meeting wasn’t handled well. We were given written answers to our questions that were then read aloud, and we were not allowed to ask questions to clarify the answers we had just been given. The atmosphere became a little fraught! Those of us there decided we needed to meet again to keep up the pressure on the CCG board. We wrote to all the GPs in Haringey, we contacted the local press, we contacted local counsellors on the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, we contacted our local MP, and planned a public meeting.

We were supported in our campaign by our local health anti-privatisation group Defend Haringey Health Services. They had done a lot of work last year trying to get the CCG to sign up to a pledge to resist the top down imposition of Any Qualified Provider. They had connections to other local anti-cuts and anti-privatisation groups which helped build support for the amendments.

The constitution is still in draft form and will be formally adopted at the next meeting of the CCG board on the 14th March, which will be at the West Green Learning Centre at 1.30pm. We’ll be encouraging everybody involved in the campaign to attend to witness the CCG taking this bold step.

We are planning to go ahead with our public meeting and we’ve invited a representative of the CCG to talk about the constitution and their Patient and Public Engagement Strategy. We want to have an impact on the way health services are commissioned and provided in Haringey in the future, and the adoption of the 38 Degrees commissioning amendments by the CCG is a good start! The recent news about the coalition trying to sneak through the Section 75 legislations that will force CCGs to put contracts out to tender means that we need to keep campaigning. Sign the petition here.

If you’d like to be involved in the local NHS campaign in Haringey please do get in touch - haringey38degrees@gmail.com

David

38 Degrees members

A new fight over NHS privatisation has just begun. Jeremy Hunt is trying to use new powers, hidden within last year’s controversial NHS laws, to force local GPs to privatise more health services.  This is one of the things we were afraid might happen – and now our worst fears are being confirmed. We need to do all we can to stop it.

Jeremy Hunt’s new privatisation plot is contained within “NHS competition regulations”.  Usually these kinds of rules get quickly rubber-stamped by Parliament. This time, we need to get MPs and Lords to stand up to Hunt and block his plans.

It’s a long shot, but we have a chance of stopping these changes because Hunt is breaking promises made to MPs when NHS laws were voted through last year.  If we generate a huge, public outcry to put pressure on the politicians who clung on to those promises last time the government attacked our NHS, we can convince them to stop these new laws.

Sign the petition against Jeremy Hunt’s new NHS privatisation plan here – we’ve got just a couple of days before we’ll need to deliver it.

Hunt’s new regulations (Statutory Instrument 257 under Section 75 of the Health & Social Care Act 2012) are like a catalogue of our worst fears.  GPs would have to open up every part of local health services to private companies, whether or not it’s what they or local people want. It would speed up the break up of the NHS, giving profit-hungry companies new rights to muscle in.

Last year, the government promised it wouldn’t go as far as forcing privatisation on local health services. Lots of MPs and Lords said these promises convinced them to vote for the NHS law. Now, we need to go back to these same MPs and Lords, and tell them to find some backbone. If they really voted for the law because of those promises, now they’ve got no excuse not to put a stop to Hunt’s latest privatising move.

Let’s build a petition to hand in to each of the MPs and Lords who believed the government’s promises on privatisation.

All over the country, 38 Degrees members have been working together to convince their local NHS decision makers to do the right thing and limit privatisation in their area. Now, government is trying to take that power away from local doctors and the patients they serve.

This is going to be tough. It could be the start of the second round of the fight to protect everything that’s precious about the NHS. But it’s the right thing to do, because we know that when private companies move in, all too often it doesn’t end well for patients.

Sign the petition now.