No to foundation trust status!

The North East Essex Mental Health Branch of Unison has agreed to resist and campaign against plans by the North East Essex Mental Health Trust to form a foundation trust, on the grounds that this will put profit before people and take the running of the hospital out of government hands.

The foundation hospital scheme, promoted by Patricia Hewitt and first proposed by Alan Milburn with Tony Blair’s blessing, makes NHS trusts independent and in competition with one another.

As health minister, Hewitt subjected the NHS to marketisation and New Labour’s obsession with targets. The foundation hospital scheme goes even further, in effect breaking up the NHS and putting it in the hands of private marketeers and capitalist investors.

These profiteers – including British and foreign contractors - have already milked the NHS of billions in public money, thanks to their friends in New Labour.

Drastic cutbacks in spending after Hewitt introduced NHS internal market pricing last year have already led to the closures of mental health facilities in Essex, at Kitwood and at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, apart from ward closures and the sacking of thousands of nurses up and down the country.

In fact the North East Essex Mental Health Trust still has to resolve its own financial problems before it can apply for foundation trust status.

The branch also considered racist attacks on nurses by mental health patients over a two year period within the Trust, and has commissioned solicitors to investigate the attacks in which many of the trust’s black nurses suffered racial abuse.

The branch also re-affirmed its commitment to continue campaigning against racism and the BNP.

The branch has also sent £50 to social care staff in Glasgow who are on an indefinite strike against Glasgow City Council in a pay dispute. The strike has already lasted three weeks.

There is already widespread anger amongst nurses and other NHS staff over the government’s latest paltry pay increase offer of 2.5 per cent.