HEALTH workers and trade unions are planning a big rally in York on Saturday to protest against the Health and Care Bill currently being debated in Parliament.

They claim the bill will open the door to greater private sector involvement in the NHS - and that it does nothing to address huge staff shortages, or the backlog of operations and urgent care.

The government says the bill aims to replace competition within the NHS by 'integration'. It will see the local clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) which currently decide local health spending priorities swept away and replaced by new, regional Integrated Care Boards covering areas with a population of more than three million.

York would be part of a regional board that also covers Hull and Humberside.

Lower-level boards will take more local decisions. But critics claim the reforms will mean greater involvement of the private sector.

Gwen Vardigans of York and Scarborough Defend our NHS says it took an amendment in the House of Lords to block a move to allow private companies to be represented on the new regional boards.

But there could still be private firms represented on the smaller, more local boards, she says. "We're demanding that the NHS stays publicly funded and remains a universal service available to all without charge," she said.

Crucially, she added, the Bill does nothing to address the 800,000 vacancies nationwide in the NHS - or to provide pay rises for NHS staff.

"There is increased anxiety about realistic funding required to maintain the NHS (and to) treat the backlog of elective surgery and urgent care for serious illness, cancers and cardiac conditions," she said.

"Unions are calling for additional funding for the NHS, with £20 billion as a starter amount, and an immediate pay rise for NHS workers to value workers, to help them cope with the rising cost of living and to retain and recruit the NHS workforce required to provide safe systems of care."

York Central MP Rachael Maskell, who will be one of the speakers at Saturday's rally, said now was not the time for a 'massive reorganisation' of the NHS.

"We're in the middle of a pandemic," she said. "It is really important that we still continue to keep our focus on the challenges the NHS is facing."

Another concern about the bill, she said, was that York could lose health funding as a result of the NHS reorganisation it proposes.

York would be lumped in with Hull and Humberside as part of the regional health decision-making board.

"In Hull there is greater inequality and deprivation, so it (Hull) could end up getting more money."

But York Outer Conservative MP Julian Sturdy said it was ‘disappointing to see scaremongering and misinformation being spread in relation to the Health and Care Bill’.

The draft law would improve health outcomes by ‘ensuring closer local coordination between health and social care providers like NHS bodies, local authorities and charities, and actually makes it harder for services to be contracted to private providers,’ he said.

Saturday's York rally, which is being organised by York and Scarborough Defend our NHS, will take place at 2pm beside York Minster.

It will be on of several major SOS/NHS rallies in cities around the country on the same day.

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