Richimond & Twickenham Times: Letter on Surgery Privatisatio

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 Hospital’s £53 million new surgical centre, with the picture of the 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 have 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 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 Action”. But that’s for the longer term - with its understandable bias towards surgery, and its key recommendation 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 it mention privatisation - 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 screaming, IT and all, 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 so vividly made clear.


The centralisation of politics in 10, Downing Street, is coming to an end. Councils can no longer stay silent, still less when they have statute behind them with the NHS Act 2001 placing a duty on NHS trusts and authorities to consult, before proposals such 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 Labour’s National Executive Committee. His protests 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