Tory MP hopeful slams Keep Our NHS Public photo exhibition
Amy Gray is standing for the Conservatives in Hackney North and Stoke Newington
A photo exhibition in a Hackney library about the ‘privatising of the NHS’ has been criticised by Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Hackney North.
The photo exhibition by Keep Our NHS Public campaigner Marion MacAlpine is a series of photos with accompanying captions that claims to show how the National Health Service is being increasingly taken over by the private sector.
Amy Gray, who is hoping to unseat the current incumbent MP Diane Abbott from her Hackney North and Stoke Newington seat, condemned both the use of a public library for the ‘Keep Our NHS Public’ campaign exhibition and the content of the exhibition itself.
Ms Gray said: “It’s nonsense to say that the NHS is being privatised.
“This campaign group is scaremongering and Hackney Council has questions to answer about why they have hosted this exhibition in a public building like a library.
“This follows the misuse of patient data by similar campaign groups which contacted residents through their doctors’ surgeries, using personal contact details which are shared solely for health reasons.”
About the exhibition: the details on display at Hackney Central Library. Photograph: Hackney Citizen
Controversial: the Keep Our NHS Public photo exhibition at Hackney Central Library. Photograph: Hackney Citizen
Another view: From the comments book that visitors are invited to contribute to. Photograph: Hackney Citizen
Visitors to the photo exhibition can leave their comments in a notebook provided by the organisers.
One such comment reads: “We forget that the Labour Government began the process of setting up the structure / means for the privatisation within the NHS – which the Tories are now forcing through unchecked…”
When quizzed by the Hackney Citizen as to who gave the go-ahead to the hosting of the exhibition in Hackney Central Library, a Town Hall spokesperson said it was “the Council” who had given the thumbs-up.
Defending the decision, Cllr Jonathan McShane, the Cabinet Member for Health Social Care and Culture said: “Hackney Central, like other libraries across the country is hosting an exhibition, for three weeks, about the NHS.
“It’s a photographic exhibition and like a lot of art it has a political dimension. Any views expressed are those of the artist and if it prompts debate that has to be a good thing.”
The exhibition at Hackney Central Library ends today, Saturday 28 February.
Hackney Keep Our NHS public has been asked by the Hackney Citizen for comment.
The Tory candidate for Hackney North parrots the government line that the NHS is not being privatised. The reality is that £6.55bn of NHS funding went to private companies last year – an increase of over 50% since they coalition came to power. New rules mean this is set to increase dramatically. My vote will go to the candidate who supports the NHS Reinstatement Bill 2015 (http://www.nhsbill2015.org/) – the only way to reverse the fragmentation and destruction of our NHS.
We called the exhibition ‘How Come We Didn’t Know?’ because much of NHS privatisation is hidden from us. For example, Virgin Care run over 350 GP surgeries.
From the 2013 reorganisation till end of 2014, one third of NHS contracts went to the private sector (BBC.co.uk/news/health-30397329), and it’s rising. New rules on commissioning have just been announced that will dramatically speed up privatisation (Guardian 24th Feb 2015). This is not scaremongering.
It is simply not true that this government is leading a charge to privatise the NHS. Around six per cent of services are provided by private providers – up from around five per cent under the last Labour government. The vast majority of health services in this country are still provided by the NHS – and will continue to be.
The Torys have consistently misled the public about privatisation. Having a NHS brand on services does NOT guarantee they are run by the NHS. The decision to force competition for basic NHS services is ideological, not cost effective. There are multiple examples of failures of private sector services such as out of hours in Devon, Harmoni OOH in Hackney, 3 surgeries covering 9000 patients shut down in Camden as the private sector was not profiting from them. The current gov is about to force millions of pounds worth of tenders for administrative services to support Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). The gov will deny this is privatisation as the organisations will still have a NHS logo, this is how privatisation is hidden. Private services are not cheaper, and have been awarded despite greater cost to Tory contacts eg
‘Rifkind-linked company in shady privatised NHS contract’ http://action.sumofus.org/a/nhs-overbid/?akid=9593.2697560.4lpROF&rd=1&sub=fwd&t=1
Are the sumptuous buildings depicted in these photographs not the HQs of private companies who are profiting from the NHS? Or are they figments of the artist’s imagination? The 2010 govt had no mandate to ‘reform’ the NHS in favour of privatisation, spending billions on an ideological splurge. If this continues, multinationals will cherry pick profitable treatments and less profitable ones will be starved of funds. The strategy is, manipulate the system to ensure failure: when it fails, privatise it!
” … manipulate the system to ensure failure: when it fails, privatise it!” Just as happened with our railways! The bottom line must be that healthcare should never be about profit-making; it must be a public service for the common good. Defenders of right-wing, neo-liberal capitalism profiteering from illness will continue to obfuscate the truth – congratulations to the photographic artist for exposing it!
Amy Gray’s views reflect those of the private healthcare corporations themselves, who do not even put their name on their HQ front doors. “How come we didn’t know? is exactly the sort of exhibition we need to see in our libraries so we can find out what is going on. It’s called freedom of speech. Clearly Amy opposes that too. The exhibition’s run at Central Library finished on Saturday but keep your eye on http://www.hackneykeepournhspublic.org for future showings. And yes Labour and the Lib Dems have been as responsible for privatisation of the NHS too. Read some of the books on the NHS in the library …. quick before Amy gets those removed!
A very important exhibition showing the extent of the privatisation which is taking place in our NHS under the Tory-led Coalition. As the organisers point out, much of this has been hidden and it needs to be much wider known. The exhibition provides a valuable service and the organisers deserve congratulaton.
We need to make sure that we don’t elect the likes of Amy Gray in May if we want to preserve the NHS as a free, universal and publicly funded service.
It is sad to see an attempt to put down this exhibition and its contribution to the debate about the future of the NHS. The NHS has been run as a market with an increased private sector input for the last 25 years and the question now is whether that experiment has worked. Many believe it hasn’t and are pushing for the removal of the market from the NHS through the NHS Reinstatement bill. This bill is supported by both the Hackney Green Party parliamentary candidates. We should be talking more not less about the future of our NHS.
Foxtrot Oscar, Tory. You and your poisonous ideas are not welcome in this manor. No amount of pleading will convince me you’re anything but a shill for greedy shareholders vying to profit from the sick and the dying. I don’t know how you lot sleep at night.
I have no problem with the existence of the exhibition – it’s the location of a misleading political campaign in a public building like a library which is inappropriate. What if the library hosted an ‘art’ exhibition about the benefit to the NHS of partnerships with non-NHS providers like businesses? Don’t tell me you’d all be welcoming that – your response would be the same, rightly so.
Be careful, Concerned Citizen. I live in Hackney. It’s my home as much as yours. “You are not welcome” is the kind of poisonous thing which was said to many of the early arrivals in the immigrant communities who have made our borough their home. Basing that kind of comment on political affiliation is just as wrong as basing it on race, religion, caste or class.
I just want to point out that a political affiliation is NOT at all the same as race, religion, caste or class. A political affiliation is a choice, whereas the others are to a large extent determined by birth. It would be perfectly acceptable to say that Nazis were not welcome but not that Chinese people, for example, weren’t welcome.