Greens call for greater local power in government’s NHS shake up proposal

• Jonathan Bartley: “The profit motive has no place in health care”

The Green Party has called for an end to privatization and greater power for local public health bodies as the government presents its plan to reform the NHS.

Green Party co-leader Jonathan Bartley said:

“The first priority for any NHS reorganisation is to end the internal market and restore the principle that the profit motive has no place in health care. The 2012 reorganisation opened the door ever wider to the private market, and we must remove this disease from the heart of the system.

“Caroline Lucas’s NHS Reinstatement Bill - introduced to Parliament almost six years ago - sets out our blueprint to reverse the damage caused by both Labour and Conservative governments labouring under an ideological mistake that the market could solve all problems.”

Bartley also called for more power to be devolved local public health bodies who best know and understand the needs of their communities:

“The return to a more coordinated approach that would bring together all those concerned with the UK’s health would be a welcome move. However, the timing of the white paper suggests a central government power-grab in the midst of the greatest crisis ever faced by our NHS.

“We need to see devolution of more power over health to the local level. As we have seen throughout this pandemic, it is local public health experts who are best placed to serve their communities. It is these experts who should have been entrusted with the test and trace system, instead of the highly-centralised system based on private companies which has been a categorical failure.

“We will be closely scrutinising the proposals to ensure they address the issues of chronic underfunding to social care and address how the NHS will meet the growing needs of our older population.”