A meeting has been organised in Gloucester to stop local NHS services being broken up and privatised (for meeting details see the bottom of this post)

The government’s changes to the NHS have put responsibility for spending NHS money, and deciding what your local health service looks like, in the hands of groups run by local doctors. These groups are called “Clinical Commissioning Groups” (CCGs). This needless and costly restructuring of local services is being implemented nationwide, and the motive is political – CCGs will be under pressure to cut services and hand contracts to private health companies. But if we work together we can persuade them to instead adopt policies which protect our local NHS.

Groups of local 38 Degrees members are well placed to influence their local CCG. CCGs are required by law to pay some attention to local patients. And many doctors involved were opposed to Andrew Lansley’s changes. They are likely now to be keen to hear ways they can protect services for their patients and block or slow down privatisation.

If we get in early, while CCGs are still being set up, we can get them to write safeguards into their constitutions. These safeguards will help rein in privatisation and protect the NHS.

38 Degrees funded lawyers have prepared watertight wording for CCGs to write into their constitutions. If local 38 Degrees members persuade their CCG to adopt this wording, then we should be able to block or slow down privatisation.

In Gloucestershire we have recently had a victory in the ongoing fight to stop privatisation – the public and staff consultations on the future of community health services produced a very clear result in favour of keeping services in the NHS. This must not be frustrated by another trojan horse in the form of a CCG giving contracts to private companies.

Meeting details
Venue: 267, Bodiam Avenue, Tuffley, Gloucester, GL4 0XW

Date & time: 7 – 9pm, Thursday 1st November