We are campaigning for a clear commitment from the Labour Party to saving the National Health Service.

We want to stop and reverse privatisation, and rebuild the NHS as a comprehensive public service providing for all on the basis of need – not a logo above a marketplace of profit-making companies.

We welcome Labour’s pledge to repeal the Health and Social Care Act and its key “competition regulations” promoting marketisation – and to restore the ministerial duty to provide national health services. We also welcome Andy Burnham’s commitment that the NHS must be protected from international “free trade” agreements.

But to rebuild the NHS we need more. We need a major drive to undo the damage done by the Act, and before that by years of policies shifting the NHS towards a market system, like the obscenely wasteful “internal market”, widespread privatisation and outsourcing, and fragmentation into competing units. We want a fight to bring contracts already in the hands of private companies back into the NHS. We want an end to the Private Finance Initiative and liberation from crushing PFI debts. We want an end to cash-driven closures, reversal of cuts and adequate funding to rebuild the NHS as a genuine public service.

Such policies are necessary to restore a comprehensive NHS providing a top quality health service for all, as well as decent terms and conditions for its workers. We support a Living Wage and a mandatory minimum staffing ratio of one nurse to every four patients.

We want reversal of the Coalition’s attacks on migrants’ access to the NHS. We want integration of health and social care to mean that social care becomes a public service.

We are supporting the lobby of Labour Party conference on 21 September, and want to build an ongoing alliance of NHS campaigners, Labour Party activists and trade unions/trade unionists to fight for these goals.

Want to add your name to this statement? Please add your or your organisation’s name by adding in the comments below or by emailing [email protected], and circulate widely. Regular updates to the list of signatories are here. 

Already signed by organisations and individuals including:

People’s March for the NHS
999 call for the NHS (Darlo mums)
Wendy Savage, Keep Our NHS Public President
Kate Osamor, NHS Worker, Unite activist and Labour Party national executive-elect
Dr Louise Irvine, Chair of Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign
Colin Standfield, on behalf of Ealing Hospital SOS
Hackney Keep Our NHS Public
Leeds Keep Our NHS Public

Dr David Wrigley, GP Carnforth in Lancashire, British Medical Association Council
Anita Downs, nurse and Unite the Union secretary at Lewisham Hospital, SLH steering committee

Jill Mountford, SLH steering committee
John McDonnell MP
Dr Jacky Davis, NHS Consultants’ Association co-chair
Ron Singer, Medical Practioners Union (Unite) chair

Carol Ackroyd, Hackney KONP
Caroline Molloy, OurNHS openDemocracy editor
Pete Radcliff, Broxtowe Constituency Labour Party secretary
Pat Smith, Hull North CLP secretary
Pete Campbell, junior doctor, Newcastle
Doreen Illingworth, Leeds North West CLP
Chris Marks, PCS union North West Regional Organiser
Marsha Jane Thompson, Havering Unison secretary and LRC Vice Chair
Pia Feig, Trafford KONP and Unison Manchester Community and Mental Health
Barbara Iqbal, Trafford KONP and Unison
Sarah Barratt, Trafford KONP
Nik Barstow, Trafford KONP, Unite and Stretford and Urmston CLP
Tom Barstow, Trafford KONP, PCS and Stretford and Urmston CLP
Maggie Barker, Trafford KONP and Unison Salford University Branch
Ron Mendel, Northampton Reclaim Our NHS chair and Northampton Trades Council President
Professor Alwyn Smith
Omar Raii, University College London Union External Affairs and Campaigns Officer
Professor Robert Moore, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, The University of Liverpool
Michael Coleman, Professor Epidemiology and Vital Statistics, Cancer Research UK Cancer Survival Group, Department of Non-Communicable Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Daniel Nichols, Romford CLP chair
Daniel Cooper, National Union of Students National Executive Committee
Lynne Roper, paramedic, Okehampton, Northampton
Ria Bernard, London Young Labour Campaigns Officer
Liam McNulty, London Young Labour Campaigns Officer
Hannah Thompson, London Young Labour committee
Dan Young, Chair, London Young Labour
Gavin Sibthorpe, London Young Labour Policy Officer
Caroline Hill, Young Labour committee Trade Union Officer
Conrad Landin, Young Labour committee Eastern Representative
Rida Vaquas, Young Labour committee, Under 19’s Officer
Max Shanly, Young Labour committee, South East Representative
Janet Shapiro, Hornsey and Wood Green Labour Party, Defend Haringey Health Services Coalition.
Dr Alex Scott-Samuel, joint chair, Politics of Health Group
Dr Mary Edmondson, London
Dr Pam Martin, London
Dr Judith Ibison, GP and senior lecturer
Dr Jack Czauderna, Retired GP and GPwSI in CFS/ME, Sheffield Save Our NHS
Dr Maureen O’Leary, Retired Consultant Psychiatrist, Sheffield Save Our NHS
Dr Helen Groom, Keep Our NHS Public North East
Dr Aneez Esmail, Associate Vice-President, Social Responsibility and Equality & Diversity, Manchester University
Martin Manasse, Keep Our NHS Public North East
Annie Moelwyn-Hughes
Val Walsh, Liverpool
Teresa Williamson
Gordon Nardell, former Labour councillor
Judith Varley, Liverpool University
Suresh Chauhan, Leicester
Dr Sue Povall, Liverpool University
Cam Stocks
Robert MacGibbon, BMA, Leiston Branch Labour Party deputy chair
Jilla Burgess-Allen, Public Health Specialty Registrar, Public Health, Derby Council