Secret consultation documents finally released after the Morning Star’s two-year freedom of information battle show the Home Office misrepresented public opinion, claiming support for policies that most respondents actually strongly criticised as dangerous and unfair, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
The NHS - A manifesto for renewal
FAWZI IBRAHIM argues that the NHS needs reforms to bring it back to its original tenets and outlines five fundamental changes that are critical to achieving this
GETTING THE PULSE? Keir Starmer, and Health Secretary Wes Streeting, with chief paramedic at London Ambulance Service Pauline Cranmer, meet NHS staff during a visit in east London
Our groundbreaking report reveals how private rail companies are bleeding millions from public coffers through exploitative leasing practices — but we have the solutions, writes Aslef Scottish organiser KEVIN LINDSAY
With Reform UK surging and Labour determined not to offer anything different from the status quo, a clear opportunity opens for the left, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE
Reform’s rise speaks to a deep crisis in Establishment parties – but relies on appealing to social and economic grievances the left should make its own, argues NICK WRIGHT
This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH
A maverick’s self-inflicted snake bites could unlock breakthrough treatments – but they also reveal deeper tensions between noble scientific curiosity and cold corporate callousness, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
The FBU is demanding 52 weeks of full pay for women firefighters, highlighting the unique health risks they face — and the continuing need to recruit and retain more women if policies like this are still not in place, writes SEONA HART
SOON after the establishment of the NHS in 1948, efforts were made to dilute its provisions and undermine its principles from the introduction of charges for prescriptions, for dental care and for spectacles in 1952 right through to Margaret Thatcher’s internal market, the closer collaboration with the private providers and PFI under the Tony Blair government and the removal of the duty on the secretary of state to secure and provide healthcare for all in the 2012 Health and Social Care Act.
The assault was incessant resulting in significant erosion of NHS provisions and a gradual undermining of the core principle of the NHS as outlined in the 1948 Act which placed a duty on the secretary of state to provide key universal health services throughout England.
This core principle was deliberately subverted and substituted with “free at the point of delivery,” promoted energetically by the Blair and subsequent governments which went unchallenged at the time.
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When privatisation is already so deeply embedded in the NHS, we can’t just blindly argue for ‘more funding’ to solve its problems, explain ESTHER GILES, NICO CSERGO, BRIAN GIBBONS and RATHI GUHADASAN
Born from my communist social worker mother’s efforts to bridge healthcare gaps, Labour’s push for home-based care now risks becoming another avenue for the US corporate takeover of the NHS, writes RICHARD CLARKE
Diverting public funding to grow private-sector ‘spare capacity,’ actively undermines the funding and staff available to the NHS and results in a worse service, write JOHN PUNTIS and TONY O’SULLIVAN
Keep Our NHS Public campaigner GREG DROPKIN dissects how Lord Darzi’s recommendations align with Starmer’s plans for NHS ‘reform,’ warning of creeping privatisation under the guise of modernisation