Protest at Shropshire’s plans to hive off NHS services into a
social enterprise
24 May, 2010 PRESS RELEASE
Protest at Shropshire’s plans to hive off NHS
services into a social enterprise
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.
enterprise option which could then mean that all the
primary health care services in Shropshire would became a social
enterprise.
-ends-
NOTES TO NEWS EDITORS:
For further information, please ring:
Michael Tuff ( 07976 535 110
Karen Reay, National Officer, Health ( 07798 531
004
David Fleming, National Officer, Health ( 07798 531013
Shaun Noble, Communications Officer (Health
Sector)
( 020 7420 8951
( 07768 693 940
