'I have been put up for sale by NHS England' - Amazing Grace petitions David Cameron

Grace demonstrates outside Monitor/NHS Improvement

Grace Balogun is seeking support for her petition LINK to save her Sudbury (Vale Farm) GP Practice from the market. She tells David Cameron why he should intervene below.

Let me introduce myself .My name is Grace and I need urgent help. I am a National Health Service patient and, along with my fellow patients of the fantastic Sudbury GP surgery in Wembley. I have been put up for sale by NHS England. The same NHS England that loves to talk about "patient choice" but all NHS England really care about is "the market in healthcare". BUT I TALK - AND CARE - ABOUT MY FAMILY DOCTORS WHO KEEP ME WELL AND GIVE ME THE CARE MY COUNTRY PROMISED ME FOR WORKING AND LIVING IN THIS COUNTRY - FOR LIFE, CRADLE TO GRAVE.

I live in the London Borough of Brent, an area where we already have a shortage of GPs, more GPs retiring , and a largely deprived population which is expected to expand over the next 5 years by about 80,000 people. I suffer from a range of major health issues which means that I live my life in a wheelchair. Don't get me wrong. I have a good and happy life – or I did until NHS England decided – without asking me – that it would be a good idea to take away from me the Family Doctors who have cared for me for the last 14 years. GP's who I would follow ,if they moved halfway across the country – but my wheelchair bound status makes that pretty tricky. To add insult to injury, I have already had one fight - alongside my fellow patients - lasting 9 years, and including threatened legal action against the NHS, to keep my Doctors from being tendered out for sale before. That fight - I thought - ended in 2013. 

 

Patients make a stand against marketisation

So WHY is Sudbury Surgery Patient List again "up for sale", and my fragile care threatened?

NOT TO SAVE MONEY. THE NEW CONTRACT WILL COST NHS ENGLAND £70,0000 A YEAR MORE. NOT BECAUSE OUR GPS AND THEIR TEAM ARE NO GOOD – although senior officials in NHS England London region (including the Boss) wrote telling my MP, my local councillors and a Brent patient group that they were not "performing" - ridiculous allegations they have since had to withdraw.

 NOT BECAUSE IT IS HARD FOR ME TO GET AN APPOINTMENT WITH MY GP – no, we are known in Brent for having fantastic service from our surgery.

NOT BECAUSE OF INADEQUATE SERVICES -We have EXTRA SERVICES, like in-house professional counselling sessions every week, a GP specially trained in mental health services, a specialist diabetic clinic and diabetic nurse, methadone prescribing service, minor surgery, acupuncture and were just about to start the practice as a GP training practice. Our practice also hosts a walk-in blood testing clinic, and the out of hours "overflow" GP appointments for our locality. Sudbury Surgery does a fantastic service for the community, IN the community. It is run by a not for profit social enterprise.

NO, I have been put up for sale because MY DOCTORS ARE JUST TOO GOOD. Since their social enterprise got the contract 3 short years ago, the patient list has grown from 5000 to 8600, and is still growing. How I wish it had stayed at less than 6000! Why, you ask me? Because, at less than 6000 patients, apparently, according to NHSE England, a "patient list" is "unattractive to the market" . Market, what market ? The market to which my surgery and the 15 other practices in "Tranche 4 London GP practices" NHS England gleefully advertised as the "greatest number of opportunities to potential providers yet" -when it held a "market engagement event" helpfully timed when our GPs were serving their patients in surgery. Bulk sale opportunity! Does it sound as though NHS England is interested in keeping the practice with our ordinary, caring, hardworking GPs?

Those companies who attended the "event" included (off-shore) Virgin Healthcare (who wanted us last time), Care UK, and The Practice Group (who have just "bulk" handed back 5 GP practices in Sussex to the NHS (meaning of course the patients in their patient lists) after taking them over, when their funding was cut - there's a reassuring precedent).

When we realised what was happening, Sudbury Surgery's patients got together, had meetings, wrote many long letters to NHSE, and to NHS (so-called) Improvement who is supposed to regulate "competition" in the NHS, demonstrated outside the Department of Health, NHS England, attracted newspaper attention and explained to and collected the signatures of over 3700 INDIVIDUAL PATIENTS to a petition saying "NHS ENGLAND PLEASE GO AWAY AND LEAVE US WITH THE GPS WHO HAVE CARED FOR US FOR OVER 14 YEARS".

We have struggled for 9 months using every avenue open to us. HAS IT MADE ANY DIFFERENCE? NO. So now I am calling on David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt and The Queen to intervene and ask NHS England to take my Doctors 'practice out of the tender NOW. I was promised cradle to grave care in the NHS - not to be a commodity patient - attractive to a "market". Not that I think a patient like me with complex health needs will be very attractive to a "provider" interested in "markets" PLEASE, PLEASE LET ME AND MY FELLOW SUDBURY SURGERY PATIENTS KEEP THE DOCTORS THEY LOVE, and save the NHS £70,000 a year .

Sign Grace's petition HERE

Gove has gone but we must widen the battle to take on the GERM

There was delight in Brent schools yesterday when the news of Michael Gove's demotion filtered through to staffrooms and classrooms.

It soon became clear that his replacement might well be 'more of the same' but there is no doubt of the personal antipathy that Michael Gove has engendered amongst teachers and many parents.

Now the campaign must move on to challenging the Global Education Reform Movement, more or less supported by the three main parties, which is responsible for the marketisation of schooling. This is a vehicle for the privatisation of schools, giving away public assets to private companies for profit; the harnessing of education to the needs of the market; the conversion of pedagogy into an industrial process of delivery, testing and grading;  teachers' loss of professional autonomy and creativity and the robbing of children of their childhood.

The Green Party understands this and will be part of that campaign.

Save Our NHS for the Common Good

Attempt to clear up confusion on council rent increases not entirely successful

Pete Firmin

Speaking to Brent Executive last night, Pete Firmin, secretary of Brent TUC, a South Kilburn resident and Labour Party member, lambasted the Council's stance on council rent increases.  He said that the annual above inflation increases, which in his case would mean an increase of 40% over 5 years, should be unacceptable to a Labour Council.

The plans were included in the Housing Strategy officers' report which Firmin described as impenetrable. Several people had tried to make sense of it, including Brent Central potential Labour candidate Kingsley Abrams, and had been unable to say with absolute certainty what was proposed. His local Kilburn councillors had said they knew nothing about it and when he asked Cllr Margaret McLennan and Cllr Michael Pavey, both members of the Executive what it meant, they confirmed rent rises over five years to 80% of market rents.

He said that the Council would be adding to the financial problems of people already hit by benefit cuts, council tax benefit changes and higher food and energy prices. He asked why tenants were being forced to fund new build through the rent increases and contrasted that with the freezing of the Council Tax.

Firmin said that this was not something the Council had to do and he circulated information from Islington Council  on its approach.

Muhammed Butt defended the Council's approach saying that new housing was imperative. Cllr  Margaret McLennan, lead member for housing, said that the policy referred to social rent and not market rents (a search of the report reveals that the only mention of social rent is one about the possible national fixing of these).  She said that the Council had not yet decided on their definition of an affordable social rent.  She said that that the planned new build was good news ands that the plans had receved a high level of endorsement.The priority was to house people on the waiting list.

Andy Donald, head of Regeneration and Major Project, said the new build would go straight to an 'affordable' rent of between 60% and 80% of market rent. This was the government's definition and the Council would have to charge that to use a government grant. If new build was at an 'affordable rent' it would help fund the refurbishment of existing stock. The actual rent rises would be fixed in February 2013 and would be roughly 4% higher in 2014-15.

Cllr Pavey waded in to say that Pete Firmin should have discussed this earlier, the Islington document was interesting but why hadn't Pete circulated it beforehand (and anyway they had more land available than Brent) and then ended with what is fast becoming his mantra: this is not perfect but the best we can do in difficult times.

Many of us left not entirely clear on what was proposed and I suspect that was also true of the Executive members who voted to approve the strategy.

Dos the 'market' govern us now?

Well, I used to worry that multinational companies really ruled the world and that governments were relatively powerless...

Now is seems that the markets can impose unelected technocrat governments (Greece and Italy) and via Standard and Poor's rating agency make whole regions quake in their boots and adjust their policies to please the market.

Where were Standard and Poor's  when the banks were behaving so recklessly back before 2008?

Where does that leave democracy and our right to elect a party that will govern in OUR interests?

See Wall Street Journal on S & P's role in original US mortgage crisis HERE