Will your MP attend the NHS Bill debate on 11 March 2016?

Will your MP attend the NHS Bill debate on 11 March 2016?
Ask them to attend and vote for the Bill, via 38 Degrees.

 

On 1 July 2015, 12 MPs from five political parties including Jeremy Corbyn tabled the National Health Service Bill in the House of Commons, based on the second version of the NHS Reinstatement Bill. The NHS Bill  is scheduled its second reading on 11 March 2016

The NHS Bill sets out the way to fully restore the NHS as an accountable public service by reversing 25 years of marketisation in the NHS, by abolishing the purchaser-provider split, ending contracting and re-establishing public bodies and public services accountable to local communities. It gives direction for the integration of health with social care and it removes the NHS from EU competition law including TTIP

Please email your email MP –  it takes just one minute

If possible you could personalise  your email with some of the points below:
I note that the NHS is becoming increasingly fragmented, costly, and inequitable and the state no longer takes responsibility for the nation’s health.
I understand that we need our health services to be comprehensive, transparent, equitable and affordable. The only way all these goals can be attained is through a change in the law and by full public ownership.

The NHS in England is being dismantled. NHS services – including acute and emergency, children’s, elderly, and maternity care – have been deliberately underfunded since 2010. The comprehensive care we’ve come to expect continues to be cut back.

Many services have been handed to private companies such as Virgin, Serco, and US giant United Health, hiding behind the NHS logo. Valuable NHS buildings and land are being sold off to property developers, often as a result of the exorbitant costs of paying for new hospitals built under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI).

These are our services and our assets. We the public own them. And polls repeatedly show that most of us want to keep our NHS.

Privatised services cost the NHS and tax payer far more than when provided by our publicly owned and publicly run NHS.

That is because public health systems don’t seek profits. They don’t need to pay dividends to shareholders. They don’t have the added costs of private sector loans. And they don’t have to pay the management fees that private companies charge.

A public NHS also doesn’t have privatisation’s heavy marketing and contract administration costs of extra lawyers, accountants and management – estimates vary between £4.5 billion and £23 billion annually and rising. Just cutting them, not NHS services, would go a long way to cover the shortfall between government underfunding and the NHS’ needs over the next five years.

These huge commercial costs and the chaos caused by the ongoing NHS fragmentation are the direct result of privatisation. This is endangering the quality and safety of our public healthcare.

That is why we need the National Health Service Bill to remove the costs and waste of privatisation. The NHS Bill will reinstate the NHS as a proper public service. It is due to get its second reading in Parliament on Friday 11th March 2016.
The Bill already has the official backing of the Medical Practitioners Union, the BMA, Local Constituency Labour Parties, Unite the Union,The Green Party, the SNP, Doctors for the NHS (previously the National Health Service Consultants Association), Disabled People Against Cuts and Keep Our NHS Public, plus many other groups. Jeremy Corbyn is now the Labour leader and Jeremy has backed this Bill from its inception.

I urge you to support the NHS Bill by attending its 2nd reading on 11th March and voting in favour, please let me know if you going to attend.

• If you are a Labour member or affiliated trade unionist, you can also sign the statement calling for a strong stance from Labour.