Don’t let private firms vote for NHS services
As a resident who benefits from local NHS services, I am concerned about the Health and Social Care Bill which has just gone for royal assent.
This bill creates integrated care systems (ICS) in each local area to manage NHS and social care services.
It allows for private companies to sit on ICS boards and make decisions about our services while extracting profits from the NHS by providing services themselves. It has received little attention.
The chairs of ICS boards decide whether to private companies can do this. The chairman of South-East London Integrated Care System is Richard Douglas.
He has not responded to letters asking him to ban private companies from making decisions about our local NHS and from providing NHS services.
Our NHS is cash-strapped, and I do not want to see our NHS services undermined in this way.
Without the NHS I may well not be alive today.
We applauded them as heroes during the Covid-19 pandemic, as so many worked so hard and put themselves in harm’s way to help people who were at death’s door.
Christine Sanders
Ennersdale Road, Hither Green
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