Protest at Shropshire’s plans to hive off NHS services into a
social enterprise
24th May 2010
A protest meeting is to be held tomorrow (Tuesday 25 May) when
Shropshire County Primary Care Trust (PCT) meets to discuss hiving
off NHS services to a new social enterprise.
Unite, the largest union in the country, is lobbying the board
meeting at Shrewsbury Football Club at 2.00pm over its plans to
push for a social enterprise - despite the fact that the
overwhelming majority of the 1,200 staff voted against the
proposal.
Unite regional officer, Michael Tuff said: “The trust agreed to
hold a ballot and then when the staff rejected the social
enterprise plan, they ignored the wishes of staff and decided to
press ahead regardless. This is a sham and a shallow pretence at
consultation.”
Michael Tuff said that staff and members of the public would be
protesting tomorrow when the board meets to discuss going-ahead
with the plan. Unite wants the status quo to remain, as the best
way of delivering health services to the public.
Services that could be affected include four community
hospitals, the health visiting and district nursing services,
physiotherapy and occupational therapy.
Michael Tuff said: “It is clear that social enterprises are a
leap in the dark in terms of provision of services and that the
public has not been fully informed of what this could mean in terms
of these services being delivered in Shropshire in the future.
“We are urging the people of Shropshire to get behind this
campaign as the very future of many NHS community services in the
country are at stake. Social enterprises are a half-way house to
the privatisation of the NHS.”
In other parts of the country where staff have been given an
opportunity to vote on social enterprises, the proposal has been
overwhelmingly rejected. Areas where staff have voted against
social enterprises include Bedfordshire, Greenwich and West
Essex.
Unite’s campaign comes in the wake of the Department of Health’s
announcement last autumn that the NHS should be ‘the preferred
provider’ of choice. This means that outside providers can only be
asked to tender if a trust is deemed to be failing and has not
taken remedial measures.
A social enterprise is a commercial organisation, one step
removed from the NHS that can win – and lose – contracts to provide
services to the NHS for a limited period of time.
If the social enterprise loses its contracts to, for example, a
North American private healthcare company in five years time, jobs
could be lost and services to the public could become fragmented.
The ethos of a NHS providing a unified, joined-up service for
patients could disappear.
- Unite said that Telford and Wrekin PCT was also investigating
the social enterprise option which could then mean that all the
primary health care services in Shropshire would became a social
enterprise.
ENDS
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