Cancellations

The snow today has brought much of South London and indeed the country to a halt. I was due to attend a meeting of the London Ambulance Service Patients Forum, where I am the Vice Chair, but the weather meant that the meeting had to be cancelled. We get people coming to our meetings from all across London and the prospect of travelling today would be too much. We were due to have two interesting presentations. The first was about what is happening in London with public and patient involvement and how the new LINks are faring. These are the Local Involvement Networks which were established last April in place of the Patient Forums. The idea was that they were supposed to draw large numbers of people into public involvement in the NHS but many of us felt that they were established to have the opposite effect. A report issued several months ago by the National Association of Links Members, chaired by a dedicated and experienced health activist, Malcolm Alexander, confirmed that all was not well. Large amounts of money due to be given to the LINks were being syphoned off by the Local Authorities instead for other purposes and many LINks members had no real administrative or financial support.

Since then NALM has acted as a pressure group to get the Dept of Health and the Local Authorities to offer real support to local LINks and they are having some success. Patient involvement is absolutely vital for the NHS to ensure that the patient remains at the heart of the service. Unfortunately, despite the rhetoric from the Dept of Health and others supporting this idea, the reality has been quite different.

The second presentation due tonight was about what is happening to the London's health service with the implementation of the Darzi Report. Essentially this is to centralise much non-emergency services in local centres, which will include some GPs, and were some minor surgery and health advice will also be based. These centres, called polyclinics, will be dotted around various areas and are meant to have the effect that only those with serious conditions will use hospitals and A&E. There is a consultation underway at present as to where they should be sited in each Primary Care Trust area. However, there are major concerns about this. One is that it has already been revealed that up to 25% of them could be run by the private sector. There is also mounting concern from GPs and patients, that many small GP practices may close as a result. There is also the question of their impact on the remaining hospitals. This will be the biggest shakeup of the NHS for a generation.

The Green Party, while supporting a more locally based health system, is utterly opposed to any form of privatisation of the NHS and we are determined to work closely with health activists, health trade unions and groups such as pensioners to prevent it.

Our meeting is now postponed until March 2nd and if anyone wants to come along (it is open to the public) it is at the London Ambulance Service Headquarters, 220 Waterloo Road, SE1, within walking distance of Waterloo Underground and rail stations. It will be very informative for anyone wanting to know what is in the pipeline for their local NHS and GP services.

The arctic weather looks likely to continue for the week with further disruption to transport and dangerous slippery pavements. Already there has been a rise in accidents and people using the services of their local hospitals. It is at times like this that you realise how important the NHS really is.