BNP PUBLIC SERVICES BULLETIN
JANUARY 29, 2007

British National Party
www.bnp.org.uk



1. BAD PUBLIC SERVICES GET BRITAIN RATED 37TH-BEST PLACE TO LIVE IN

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_headline=britain--the-37th-best-country-
in-the-world&method=full&objectid=18538286&siteid=94762-name_page.html

BRITAIN has only managed 37th in a league of the best places to live -
making it worse than Panama, Mexico and Argentina.

The UK was marked down for its bad weather, poor transport, high cost of
living and health service.

But we did score highly for our economy and our social freedoms.

Britain was trounced by many countries which have a similar climate,
such as Holland, Denmark, Luxembourg and Germany, because they were seen
to have a better health service and infrastructure.

France topped the 191-strong list as the nation with the best quality of
life, followed by Australia, Holland, New Zealand and the US.

The French scored extra points thanks to their high-speed TGV trains,
spare hospital beds, culture, ski resorts, beaches and warmer climate.

International Living magazine judged countries on their cost of living,
culture and leisure, economy, environment, freedom, health,
infrastructure, safety and risk, and climate. A spokeswoman for the
magazine said: ‘Britain is still relatively high on the list and it is
undoubtedly an economic powerhouse with a strong and identifiable
culture.

‘But it is also expensive, its transport lets it down and it rains a
lot.’

Italy - 8th in the survey - scored a perfect 100 for culture. Its
climate, lower cost of living and transport service also bumping it up
the rankings.

A lower cost of living and increased safety compared with previous years
sent Panama (34th), Mexico (25th) and Argentina (10th) storming up the
list.

Their natural environments and climate also helped their rankings.

Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and Afghanistan were judged to be the five
most dangerous places on earth.

Haiti was the most corrupt. The Pacific island of Nauru was ranked as
the cheapest place to live.

mirrornews@...

THE TOP 50 PLACES TO LIVE:


1 France
2 Australia
3 Netherlands
4 New Zealand
5 United States
6 Switzerland
7 Denmark
8 Italy
9 Luxembourg
10 Argentina
11 Norway

[List continues online]




2. DOCTORS HIGHLIGHT POLITICAL DAMAGE TO NHS

http://www.news-medical.net/?id=21508

The message from politicians that Britain cannot afford healthcare -
even though it is one of the richest economies in the world - is
damaging the NHS.

That's the warning from an A&E consultant columnist writing in BMA News
this week. 'If we tried caring instead of business models, it might fit
better as an NHS ethos,' says 'Frontline Medicine' columnist Charles
Lamb, noting that the caring element is being forced out of the NHS.

Alongside, a junior doctor tells of his experiences trying to obtain
plastic surgery urgently needed for a patient with a gaping arm wound.
'After nearly two hours of continuous effort, a plastic surgeon
understood my desperate situation and agreed to help.'

The shocked patient learnt that hospital reconfiguration meant he had to
travel during the night to a theatre 100 miles away to get the crucial
treatment.

The 'Vital Signs' columnist writes: 'I felt sorry not only for the
patient but also for my plastic (surgeon) colleagues who were so
overloaded with extra work just because of the ‘resource crunch’ we all
face nowadays.

'This problem has become an inherent part of every hospital doctor's
life.'

The BMA, as part of its 'Caring for the NHS' campaign, is currently
working on an alternative vision for the NHS to counter what they see as
conflicting and damaging reforms.

http://www.bma.org.uk



3. FURY OVER NHS GOLDEN HANDSHAKES

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/localnews/display.var.1152241.0.fury_over
_new_nhs_golden_handshakes.php

More health bosses could be walking away with golden handshakes from a
health trust which has handed out almost £500,000 to senior managers.

Gina Brocklehurst, former chief executive of the Eastbourne Downs
Primary Care Trust, was given £230,00 after standing down from her
position following a reorganisation of health trusts in Sussex.

Earlier this month it was reported Dr Iheadi Onwuke, a former director
of public health, was paid £243,000 after working at the same trust for
just three weeks.

Advertisement continued...East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust chief
executive Annette Sergeant received a £231,000 termination payment in
2005.

Nick Yeo chief executive of East Downs and Weald Primary Care Trust
claimed pay-offs were part of the reorganisation of health trusts which
would save £1 million a year.

Mr Yeo said there had been no further pay-offs since October last year
when the reorganisation took place but warned there would probably be
more to come.

He said: ‘We are at the early stages of reorganisation. There will
probably be others, sadly, who there won't be a place for.’

Mr Yeo said efforts were being made to find senior managers positions
elsewhere in the NHS. He said more details about the reorganisation
would be released at the trusts board meeting in March.

According to an NHS website, Ms Brocklehurst left the trust to take up a
‘transitional role’ with Surrey and Sussex Strategic Health Authority.

Yesterday the authority, now called South East Coast SHA, released a
statement which said: ‘Gina Brocklehurst only had a contract with the
PCT and didn't work for the strategic health authority or any other NHS
organisation in our area.’

The pay-offs come amid concerns for the future of services at Eastbourne
District Hospital (EDH) and Hastings Conquest Hospital.

Save EDH campaigner Monica Corrina-Kavakli said: ‘It's outrageous. There
is no excuse, no reason for anybody to get that money. It's not come as
any surprise to us. ‘The money would pay for 300 cataract operations and
more than 40 heart by-passes.’

Norman Baker, MP for Lewes, called the NHS pay-off a national scandal
and said he would be bringing the issue up with the secretary of state
for health.

Mr Baker said: ‘We were told reorganisation was to help the service but
they're helping individuals who are being paid off.

‘I'm horrified these people can re-apply for jobs in the NHS. It is
absolutely disgraceful.’






4. NHS STAFF ASKED TO EASE BUDGET PROBLEMS BY WORKING FOR FREE

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23383211-details/NHS+staff+as
ked+to+ease+budget+problems+by+working+for+free/article.do


An NHS trust is asking staff to work a day for free to help ease its
financial crisis.

Workers at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust have been sent a
letter asking them to help balance the books.

It said donating ‘just one extra day of work without additional pay as a
voluntary contribution’ would benefit the trust, which has a historic
debt of almost £17 million.

And, to the anger of health campaigners, the trust wants to implement a
raft of measures so it can sign a contract with a private company under
the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) scheme.

Plans are formulating to build a multi-million hospital and mental
health unit in Pembury under PFI, but the letter hints at dire
consequences if the trust fails to hit its March targets.

The leaked memo, from Terry Coode, director of human resources to all
staff, said the trust was ‘facing a very significant challenge this
year’.

It added: ‘To be unsuccessful in our target will have serious
consequences for the trust that will affect us all.

‘It will jeopardise our investment and development plans, including our
ability to build the PFI and will weaken our stance as we strive to
ensure a strong position for (Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells) in the 'fit
for future' reconfiguration of healthcare services in Kent that will
take place in the years ahead.’

It continued: ‘To date we have avoided significant job loss as part of
our financial recovery activity, unlike many trusts across the country.’

The letter sets out how job losses can be avoided, including ‘inviting
enquiries about the possibility of voluntary redundancy’.

It also offers staff the chance to take a six-month unpaid break ‘to
pursue a personal ambition or just to take a well-earned break’.

Staff would be able to return to their original jobs or one in a similar
position, it added.

The letter also encouraged staff to carry forward five days' holiday to
the next year to ‘help avoid additional costs this year’.

Asking staff to work for free, it said: ‘We are also asking staff to
contribute just one extra day without additional pay as a voluntary
contribution to year-end.

The trust is waiting to hear from the Treasury on whether plans to build
a £300m, 512-bed hospital and mental health unit at Pembury under the
PFI scheme will go ahead.

International consortia Equion has been chosen by the trust as its first
choice developer for the project, which is due to get under way in the
autumn subject to ministerial approval.

Geoff Martin, head of campaigns at the group Health Emergency, said:
‘This slaps the nut on the Government's health care policy.

‘Nurses and other members of the healthcare team are called on to work
for nothing so that speculators and banks can cream off another fat
profit from an NHS PFI scheme.

‘This is Robin Hood in reverse, robbing the poor to fill the pockets of
the rich and it's happening right under the noses of a Labour Government
who are ripping the heart out of the NHS.’

The trust said staff were being asked to work a day unpaid on an
entirely voluntary basis.

In a statement, it said: ‘Our staff have suggested this idea to help
reduce agency use as part of plans to stay within our budgets.

‘This informal request was extended to all staff and we've had doctors
offering to work extra hours for free.

‘This is not about saving our PFI, but getting our finances right.’

An Audit Commission report published last January said the trust would
need ‘very significant additional external support’ to recover from a
deficit of almost £17m.

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: ‘This is an
unacceptable consequence of the Government placing a deadline on the NHS
to clear its deficits this year.

‘Patricia Hewitt said she would take personal responsibility for the NHS
breaking even this year, but now it seems doctors and nurses are
expected to pay the price.

‘The stark reality is that trusts cannot quickly clear deficits which
have taken years to accumulate without making damaging clinical cuts or
cutting the pay of their hard-working employees.’




5. NHS 'BEING PARCELLED UP AND PRIVATISED BIT BY BIT'

http://www.thecnj.co.uk/islington/012607/news012607_07.html

Actress Emma Thompson and former Labour MP Tony Benn added their voices
this week to a major campaign against ‘patchwork’ privatisation of the
NHS.

Ms Thompson has signed a letter expressing her fears that market-based
schemes are being pushed through with the minimum of debate.
Other signatories include Helena Kennedy QC, agony aunt Claire Rayner
and Keep the NHS Public co-founder Professor Wendy Savage, who lives in
Islington.

Ms Thompson writes: ‘These untested rapid changes – the most extensive
since the service was founded – threaten the values that bind the NHS
together.’

At the same time, Mr Benn, a former Labour minister, told a packed
conference at Friends Meeting House in Euston on Saturday that soon only
the very wealthy will be able to afford health care.

He said: ‘The NHS came about because of the power people exercised at
the ballot box. They brought health care with their votes instead of
with their wallets, but now with NHS privatisation it’s going the other
way. Soon only people with money will be able to afford the best health
care.’

He added that, instead of ‘spending all this money on Iraq’, cash should
be spent on the NHS.

The 300-strong audience heard that the private company which took over
Islington’s care homes and then halved workers’ salaries is about to run
a hospital at Lymington in the New Forest.

Professor Savage said that this was the first time an entire hospital
has been privatised.

She added: ‘Care UK will be taking over the running of the Lymington
this summer. Their first actions when taking over Islington care homes
was to reduce the wages of staff. Profits should not be made out of
health and social care.’

She added that, unlike the Thatcher privatisations of the 1980s, this
time the whole NHS is not being put up for auction.
Professor Savage said: ‘Instead, it is being parcelled up into
bite-sized pieces, and handed over to private control bit by bit. This
is happening on such a scale and at such a pace as to make it a unique
phenomenon.

‘The government’s greatest achievement has been to push through the
biggest change in the history of the NHS – under the radar and without a
public mandate. It’s time for an open debate about whether people want
the patchwork privatisation of their health service.’

Kentish Town consultant Dr Jacky Davis told the conference that the
government has squandered the goodwill of health workers. She said: ‘The
frontline workers who have always put patients first will be struggling
with the consequences of these reforms long after the architects retire
to write their memoirs.’

According to calculations made by the Keep Our NHS Public campaign, the
private sector will pocket at least £23 billion of NHS money in profits
and interest over 30 years through the private finance initiative
hospital building scheme.






6. PRIVATE FINANCE INITATIVE FIRMS TAKE £23BN PROFIT FROM NHS

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6279889.stm

The private sector will make £23bn in profits and interest over the next
30 years by building NHS hospitals, campaigners have calculated. Under
the private finance initiative, a company builds a hospital and then
gets ‘rent’ from the NHS for a set term.

A report by the Keep Our NHS Public claims the government is carrying
out ‘patchwork privatisation’ of the NHS. The Department of Health said
it ‘did not recognise the figures’ and was ‘committed to a publicly
funded NHS’. The report was being launched at a conference for health
campaigners in London on Saturday.

It says: ‘Unlike the Thatcher privatisations of the 1980s, the whole NHS
is not being put up for auction. ‘Instead, it is being parcelled up into
bite-sized pieces and handed over to private control bit by bit. ‘This
is happening on such a scale and at such pace as to make it a unique
phenomenon.’

Alex Nunns, of Keep Our NHS Public, said: ‘Unbeknown to the public, the
NHS is paying astronomical sums of money to the private sector.
‘When the NHS is making cuts and closures across the country, it's time
to ask if this is the best use of public money.’

As recently as October, the government disclosed some of the figures
involved in the NHS's use of PFI schemes to finance new hospitals. The
figures, which emerged in a response to a Parliamentary Question tabled
by Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, showed that the NHS would pay
a total of £53bn to the private firms involved.

That amount was the total cost, as opposed to the numbers in the report
by Keep Our NHS Public, which relate to profits. But the Tories claimed
at the time that the new hospitals themselves were only worth £8bn,
leaving ‘completely unjustifiable’ extra costs of £45bn.

A spokesman from the Department of Health said in response to the new
report that the annual payments made by NHS trusts to private sector
partners covered financing charges, repayment of capital, building
maintenance and, in most cases, all the non-clinical support services
like cleaning and catering.

He said the last two of this list could account for between 40% and 50%
of the annual payments. ‘The NHS has always used the independent sector
for treating patients,’ he said ‘But the difference is now that we pay
much less for this extra capacity for NHS patients thanks to our robust
contracting.’

He said more than 250,000 people had received treatment faster than they
would otherwise have done thanks to the independent sector.



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