Last week I received an e-mail from the Labour Party telling me it had reason to believe I did not support its aims and beliefs and it was excluding me from voting in the leadership election. I have voted Labour in every election since I was 18. I have been a full member of the Labour Party and even campaigned on the doorstep. But I did not agree with Labour’s policy of privatisation of the NHS (public funding of private health companies, according to the WHO definition, is privatisation). So I joined a party, formed by doctors, nurses and patients, to truly defend the NHS.
David Cameron explicitly promised "no more top-down reorganisation of the NHS". But, when the Conservatives came to power in 2010, they introduced the Health & Social Care bill, which they had concealed from the electorate during the election and which was bigger than the bill that had created the NHS in 1948. It removed the government's "duty to provide" healthcare for you and your family, a founding principle of the NHS, replacing it by a mere "duty to promote". Even the health minister would no longer have responsibility for your health. It would be left to the "market". In effect, the bill made possible to gradual abolition of the NHS.
