A well attended public meeting 'Save Our NHS - Kill the Bill' at the Nottingham Mechanics last night highlighted the threat of the government's Health and Social Care Bill 2011. Around 100 people packed the main hall of the event organised by Notts Save Our Services and others.

As the main invited speaker Colin Leyes pointed out, by opening the NHS up to 'any willing provider', market forces will dominate and price will become so much more important, so that richer people will be allowed to pay 'top ups' for better care. All hospitals will have to become Foundation Trusts if the bill is passed, operating as seperate entities who will compete to deliver hospital care. All services will be allowed to be sub-contracted. Private health providers are already rubbing their hands.

The St. Anns GP panel member Chris Udenze indicated that some GPs are already making a deal of money running Nottingham's four GP clusters and also if the Bill does go through it will be harder for patients to have a say, and they would have to find a way to have one.

The Nottingham University Hospitals Unison branch speaker Martin Benn explained that the Nations Healthcare treatment centre operating in the grounds of the Queens Medical Centre recently made a deal for a much worse provision of pharmacy (drugs) which was a cheaper tender but the contractor now admits they cannot provide the same level of service, after the treatment centre decided to cancel the contract with the existing provider. Should we be playing the price game with our health?

But it was not a united meeting by any means. Whilst various Labour candidates for local elections stood up to speak, panel speakers and other audience members stressed that the Labour Party's allowing of Independent Sector Treatment Centres and the heavy amount of Private Finance Initiative for hospital building and the introduction of Foundation Hospital status had paved the way for the current bill, and that the Department of Health had for a long time aimed to open the NHS to the market. Union members and officials got up and criticised their (and other) trade unions for not acting strongly enough in the past, in spite of the show of feeling on the large TUC organised demostration in London on March 26th. One was critical of the lack of continuity of Keep Our NHS Public in Nottingham. Another pointed out that at the recent meeting of Labour in Nottingham, ministers had said there would be no turning back of privatisation if they got back in power. So isn't that plain enough? As the the Unison speaker said, you can easily lose your hair waiting for Labour.

The Bill is not yet an Act and the coalition has been forced to take a pause, due to grassroots Lib Dem disquiet, everyone knowing that massive NHS reform was not on the election manifesto of either party. So there is a bit more time to act. But if party politics continue to dominate the campaigning the real effect of the intended reforms will remain confusing and misunderstood. The announcing of the closing of Hayward House Cancer Daycare unit on the grounds of City Hospital shows that premptive cuts are already happening, but that patients and their supporters are starting to take heed and are mounting their own campaigns. A call for a 'roadshow' to take the message of opposition to the healthcare reforms into local communities by Sneinton Against the Cuts was well received. Hopefully, with effort, the community and patient or carer response will grow and the politicians will be forced to listen and back down or face the consequences. Links also need to be made to the effects of welfare cuts and cuts to council services that will leave many who are ill and disabled without support and whose health will no doubt decline as a result. Hopefully Notts SOS and local campaigns will be able to generate this climate of resistance over the coming months, turning the anger of the meeting into effective and widepread revolt.