Richmond & Twickenham Times: Letter to The Editor

The Editor

Richmond & Twickenham Times East Twickenham,




7th August 2007,



Dear Sir,


Blair’s barmy army has struck again! Right on Richmond’s doorstep, and just when hopes were high that it had been sent packing.

Last week you carried the news of the opening of Kingston’s Hospital £33 million with new surgical centre, with a picture of matron, Bernice Constable, explaining with good reason that “the move has given all our staff a massive boost of confidence”.

Last weekend came the bombshell. Press reports revealed that “staff had been told that the survival of the hospital can only be secured if a private sector company ‘with significant experience in marketing’ is brought in to run services and attract patients from further afield”.

Bunkum and total nonsense! Kingston may need more marketing expertise, but it will be the skill of its surgeons and nurses - and the high repute in which they are held by Richmond’s GPs - that will attract “patients from further afield”.

It may be that Professor Ara Darzi has produced, with the help of 120 experts, an exceptional report on “Healthcare for London – A Framework for London”. But that is for the longer term – with its understandable bias towards surgery, and its key recommendations for London to have academic centres of clinical and research excellence. But nowhere does the Darzi Report recommend action now – as in Kingston Hospital.

Nowhere does his report mention privitisation still less making it the sole means of securing Kingston’s future, or, worse, setting a precedent for the NHS to follow, disowning public service and replacing it with the profit motive.

That is the work of the NHS and its political masters, including the remnants of Blair’s barmy army.

Tony Blair deserves every credit for his dynamism, for bringing Britain, IT and all, screaming into the 21st Century and for his work on Northern Ireland. But that is good politics, not good government, as a former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Butler, has vividly made clear.

The centralistaion of politics in 10, Downing Street is coming to an end. Councils can no longer remain silent, still less when they have statute behind them – with the 2001 NHS Act placing a duty on NHS Trusts to consult, before such proposals as Kingston’s become plans.

It is possible that the Council’s Health Overview Committee has been persuaded to stir its stumps. Frankly, however, I have higher hopes in one of Richmond’s unsung heroes, Walter Wolfgang, a member of Labours National Executive Committee. His protest at New Labour’s strong-arm tactics, at a recent annual party conference, were far more memorable than any speech of Tony Blair’s.


Yours sincerely,


Francis King