John Lister, Information Director, London Health Emergency An impossible £1.2 billion worth of cuts hang over the NHS in England in the final two months of the financial year, according to the most recent BBC survey Strategic Health Authorities.
One example Hillingdon Primary Care Trust in west London, which faces a £27m shortfall, and is bringing in management consultants in a bid to slash dom in lust two months.
Such cuts would only be possible through wholesale cutbacks on a scale that would be ponnically impossible even for this newly-reelected government and in practice unachievable in the short space of time remaining before the end of the financial year.
The result is that despite the repeated threats from - Secretary Patricia Hewitt, Wally NHS Trusts and Primary Care Trusts will be carrying hefty deficits into the new financial year - and facing a prolonged crisis, requiring drastic and unpopular cutbacks.
The cash crunch will be compounded by the imposition from April of a new market-style system of "payment by results" which will further destabilise the NHS.
But while pulling the rug from under public sector hospitals and scIvIces. New Labour's drive towards privatisation of NHS services is continuing to accelerate and widen its scope. White Paper
The new NHS White Paper published at the end of January sets its sights on establishing new "market" in the provision of primary health care (GP services) community health and social care, with consistent pressure on Primary Care Trusts SUBSCRIBE! SOCIALIST RESISTANCE is a monthly marxist paper. Our subscription rate is 1 year for £12 (UK), £15 (Europe) or £20 (other overseas. For more details fill in this coupon, ticking the appropriate box and send to us at: PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU Please make cheques payable to RESISTANCE to invite bids and award contracts to private sector companies.
Primary care, which handles 90 per cent of patient contacts with the NHS, is seen as a major arena for privatisation, with major corporations already looking to get their hands on a share of massive NHS commissioning budgets.
Just before Christmas LWU Derbyshire Primary| Care Trusts became the first to award clinical care contracts to a US-based corpoLallon. United whose European subsidiary had bid to take over Gl services in part of Derby and in the pit villages of Langwith and Cresswell.
United, based in Minneapolis, is one of the top 50 US corporations, with a turnover of £16 billion and profits last year of £1.5 billion. So it is a reasonable assumption that in launching United Health Europe in 2004, and bidding for Derbyshire contracts valued at no more than Keep our NHS public