Open letter to David Cameron
The following text has been received from the Waltham Forest Keep our nhs Public campaign
Dear Mr Cameron
We are writing to protest at your exclusion of the organisations that represent the majority of health professionals from your meeting about the implementation of the Health and Social Care Bill.
You have pointedly excluded key organisations that represent the views of over half a million health professionals. In so doing you make it clear that you are not willing to listen to the views of the very people who you yourself have said are to be the main beneficiaries of the bill and whose support is key to its implementation.
What all these organisations have in common is that they oppose the bill. They believe it will transform the NHS from a public service a duty to provide a universal, comprehensive and equitable service to a market based system of competing private providers with greatly increases risks to patients.
In calling this ‘summit’ we believe that you are trying to pre-empt the decisions of the Medical Royal Colleges who have called emergency meetings in the next few weeks to listen to their members views on the ‘reforms’. You know there is a high chance that they will vote to oppose the bill, thus joining the RCGP, RCR and others. In so doing you are undermining the internal democracy of these colleges and attempting to divide and rule.
Your stubborn disregard for these considered and well founded criticisms, which come from across the professional, academic and political spectrum is breath-taking. You clearly intend to plough on regardless, making a few cosmetic changes while repeating ad nauseum the trite phrases that now fool no-one
If you were serious about safeguarding and improving the NHGS you would listen to these critical voices, all telling you to abandon the bill. Instead you have called together a group of “yes-men” who will allow you to claim that you have significant professional support for your bill when you have no
such thing.
But doctors, along with the nurses and allied health professionals are more united each day in their opposition to the bill. Your attempt to split the profession while ignoring their voice are profoundly antidemocratic .This bill will not succeed when the majority of healthcare workers oppose it.
Dr Louise Irvine, GP, London
Dr Jacky Davis, Consultant Radiologist, London