More nurses needed—not fewer
Hands of our NHS
by Gary Dennis
Proposals to cut 722 nursing jobs throughout Northern Ireland are deeply concerning, the Royal College of Nurses has said. The posts are under threat as part of wider plans to cut almost 2,500 jobs in the health service over the next three years.
The director of the Royal College of Nursing, Mary Hinds, said that more nurses, not fewer, were needed. But the Minister of Health, Michael McGimpsey, said he has to make 3 per cent efficiency savings over the next three years.
Ms Hinds said that losing front-line service staff would mean that patients would suffer as a result. Since October last year, when all Executive departments were told to make efficiency savings of up to 3 per cent over the next three years, health trusts have been working out how best they can save money. The Assembly’s health committee is to debate the Department of Health’s proposals.
Elsewhere in the NHS, ministers have ordered a huge expansion in the role of profit-making social business in the provision of health, education and welfare services. The Cabinet Office minister, Liam Byrne, said he wanted to see more social businesses running schools, health centres, youth clubs and Sure Start children’s centres as part of a wider “aggressive growth strategy” for the social-enterprise sector. He unveiled a target of 25,000 more people working in social businesses in the next few months, many of them transferring from the NHS and local government.
Dave Prentis, general secretary of the public-service union Unison, said the move was ill-conceived at a time of growing unemployment. He added: “Surely the government needs to focus on securing jobs and services, not hiving them off from the public sector to try their luck with the financial market.”
Byrne’s initiative builds on an NHS scheme called Right to Request, which enables clinical staff, such as physiotherapists, nurses, and podiatrists, to leave the health service and set up a social business with a guaranteed three-year contract and protection of their NHS pension.
The Secretary of State for Business, Lord Mandelson, has called for a top-level summit to discuss ways in which social enterprise can play a wider role in the economy.
Unity says: It is a fundamental principle that the NHS should provide equal access to services for those in equal need.
Hands of our NHS!
Keep our NHS public, free at the point of use and not on the ability to pay.
We don’t want a health-care system modelled on the US private health-care system. People before profit! |