Campaigners concerned for future of NHS set to rally in Central Milton Keynes

A rally to protect the NHS is to be held in CMK on Saturday.

Campaigners concerned for the future of the National Health Service will gather in the square outside M&S between 12 noon and 2pm.

The event is part of a nationwide day-of-action against the government's Health and Care Bill. It will include a stall, leafleting, street theatre and music.

Speakers will include Cllr Emily Darlington, MK Council lead for Healthy Communities, and local NHS staff.

The national day of action is co-ordinated by SOS-NHS, a coalition of campaign groups. There is major support from the Unite trade union, with over 100,000 NHS staff members.

Opponents fear the Bill, currently at Report Stage in the Lords, will transform the NHS into a US-style insurance-based scheme run for profit by private corporations.

They say services will be cut and treatments rationed, with doctors replaced by less-skilled staff wielding computer algorithms. They say it cannot remedy a decade of under-resourcing which left the NHS to tackle Covid with 100,000 staff vacancies and half the beds it had in 2010; nor reverse the collapse of adult social care.

These changes will be forced through the imminent creation of 42 area-based Integrated Care Systems with private providers on their boards.

Campaigners say this will create a “postcode lottery” for treatment and give control of budgets to private corporations. It undermines the duty to serve local populations' health needs, and weakens local councils' input.

Locally, the former MK Clinical Commissioning Group has been dissolved and the much bigger Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICS will soon take over.

Chris Coppock from MK SOS-NHS said: "This bill is no safe prescription for our NHS. Far from ending the purchaser-provider split, it transplants private corporations into the heart of the NHS, where they can leech out ever more profit.

"It will create a two-tier NHS where those who can pay to “go private”, will, while those who can't may go untreated—or treat themselves through phone-apps and websites. Those—often the poorest—without such devices may find themselves locked out.

"We want an end to privatisation with a publicly-run, publicly accountable and properly resourced NHS for all. We hope everyone who cares about our NHS will come along, find out more and take part in Saturday's rally."