Defending the NHS and reversing privatisation and marketisation in the NHS

Today I have answered hundreds of e-mails received over the last few days from constituents concerned about protecting the NHS and alarmed by the way in which it is being sold off to private companies, and contracts signed for supply of services from private care organisations. I paste in here my reply to these worries, explaining where I stand on these issues.

If I were elected, I would support the inclusion of a Bill in the first Queen’s Speech after the election that would reverse 25 years of marketisation in the National Health Service, abolish the purchaser-provider split, re-establish District Health Authorities and other public bodies and fully restore the NHS in England as an accountable public service. This Bill is known as the NHS Reinstatement Bill, and you can find the proposal here: http://www.nhsbill2015.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/NHS-Reinstatement-Bill-and-Notes.pdf 

I would support inclusion of a Bill such as the one described there, without delay, to halt all the privatisation and marketisation of all parts of our crucial public infrastructure, and especially the NHS; and to initiate the quickest possible reversal of all the private finance initiatives and other market driven schemes. This is exactly the kind of thing that I shall be supporting with all the efforts I can muster, should I be elected in 2015. 

Indeed, I am already campaigning as a private citizen to prevent further marketisation in the NHS. But without a seat in parliament, there is only so much one can do. So please, if you care about a public NHS, vote for me in the coming election and encourage others to do so. The Green Party stands a chance of carrying some weight in the new parliament, if everyone who believes in these things votes sincerely for what they believe in.

To be frank, I cannot myself see how anyone who cares about these things could do otherwise than to vote Green in most constituencies in England, since there is no “least bad alternative” among the main parties available to us here. All three of the main parties seem either to support privatisation and marketisation of our public institutions or to have been complicit in it during the last five years of coalition. Let’s not be deceived by the promises of “x number more nurses”. This is just a cover for cutting costs in all sorts of other ways. I see no grounds for entrusting those other parties with this most precious part of our welfare state. We need a party that is promising to end the cuts and reverse the austerity programme: to develop a country we can be proud of where everyone is cared for and we are not taking funds from the weak and the vulnerable to feed the greedy and powerful. That’s the Green Party through and through.

There is absolutely no reason to change to a cumbersome, costly and unkind insurance system instead. The free NHS, without questions asked and without means tests or contributions requirements is the crowning glory of our welfare state, and is an essential tool in ensuring that we have healthy able-bodied mentally healthy working people to produce the resources we need, and create the society we can be secure and happy in. It is a nonsense to suggest that we can’t afford to give this free to all. We can’t afford not to. Do we want dying drunkards or sick refugees bleeding on our streets while millionaires drive by in their Porsches bought from their Swiss Bank accounts? Not for me a country that could do that. I will fight to the death to prevent any such thing.

I expect that you’re also concerned about TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) which is being cooked up in the EU, and poses a major threat to this country if our health service is undergoing privatisation, and would be bought up by American health care providers, with the risk of major legal action against the UK if we ever took them back into public hands or enacted legislation to keep costs down. The Green Party (including myself) is totally opposed to the whole of TTIP of course, and if it goes through (over our dead bodies), will definitely fight with white knuckles to keep the NHS and all other public services fenced round with impenetrable ring fences! No other party is coming out against TTIP, though they are making every effort to bluff their way into your hearts as though they cared about the NHS and would protect it. If they are not against TTIP, and not keeping the NHS out of it, they are not protecting the NHS at all. I trust you will not be deceived by the lies of other politicians who don’t want you to know what they are selling to the USA.

What's to fear about TTIP

Several dozens of my prospective voters in the South Norfolk constituency have written to me to ask me for my commitments regarding TTIP, which is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, being debated in secret by EU officials.
I record here a generic version of my thoughts on this topic which I have been sending over the last few days to these voters:

I believe that TTIP is among the great threats that we face, and this one is from within our own EU—not some aggression from Russia or foreign terrorists. This is our own politicians, entrusted with the care of our interests, and they are betraying us in secret. The episode is symptomatic of the complete disregard for democracy, and for the interests of the country as a whole, or for the common good. It’s a deal that stands to benefit no one but the largest corporations and multinationals. Its effects on small businesses in the UK, on farmers and producers and on workers wages and rights will be devastating, and the government will lose more in falling income from import duties and greater costs due to falling wages/increased poverty at home than it stands to gain in trade.

This is not just about the NHS (though that is a worry anyway, with or without TTIP: we in the Green Party are in favour of keeping the NHS public and getting rid of existing PFI systems and privatisation schemes, but much of the evil has already been done and will take years to unpick)—but is about the whole structure of the modern neo-liberal consensus across parties and across Europe, which is generating ever greater inequalities between the haves and the have-nots. I know why the EU is working on the TTIP: because the austerity programme in Europe has ruined the EU's trade and prosperity from within and created a long and unprecedented period of depression, because all the markets are affected together by the coordinated austerity programme. The solution is not to sell out to the US (or anyone else) but to stop the programme of austerity that’s causing the problem, and look for an economic system that can cope with stability instead of growth and a long-term self-sufficiency that does not involve exploiting the labour force and the planet. Let’s face it: we have immense wealth in this country, or would have, if it were not siphoned off to tax havens for the millionaires, but it’s not being fairly or gainfully used to support the right investments in the right projects to benefit the working people or the planet. Thankfully Greece has started a move to resist the old consensus and ask the difficult questions.

Only the Green Party offers a coherent solution to this combination of issues. As was evident in the debate in Norwich, the other parties are all fudging it, because they are all (including Labour) committed to the TTIP (even UKIP have not come out against it but have been voting for it insofar as they vote at all in Europe, though Stuart Agnew seemed to be trying to erase that truth or make some virtue of it). Only the Green Party is explicitly *against TTIP*, and in favour of reforming Europe to be more democratic. The Green Party favours an in/out referendum on Europe. It favours ending the austerity economics that is causing the downturn in trade in Europe and worldwide. It favours investing in making Britain and Europe energy-self-sufficient and sustainable on a slow to zero growth basis for the future without fossil fuels, so that prosperity can return and wages can rise to a level at which no one must beg for loans and food parcels. This is a new look Europe and a new look Britain, fit for a planet which is overheating and becoming too unequal and unkind.

This is my Party, and my position, and if you vote for me I will not compromise these principles.

Getting our heads round the economics of ANTI-Austerity.

Several recent media events have featured aggressive debates where some of the pro-austerity parties have tried to attack or rubbish the policies of the Green Party of England and Wales. This in itself is a good sign (because it is a sign that people are beginning to find the popularity of these policies alarming, and to see that they are winning support both here and in other parts of Europe, as most famously in Greece).

The scare tactics deployed by the aggressive interviewer typically include finding bogeys in the Green Party's policies on immigration, religious extremism and drug control. But the one that I want to consider today is the typical response to the anti-austerity policies, such as fully funding the NHS, raising the minimum wage, renationalising the railways, no tuition fees, and providing a welfare system that will enable everyone to live without fear of poverty or destitution.

The standard question is "But how will you fund this?", and the questioner then doesn't wait for an explanation of how the economics of a modern state works, but assumes that it works like a family budget in which there is a set income, and you decide what your priorities are for spending it. Responsible budgeting, they suppose (or they want their viewers to suppose), is like responsible budgeting at home. If you haven't got much money, and you've borrowed some money already, then you need to spend only that and no more. In fact, you should spend less, so as to repay some of your debts. This is the very muddled economic thinking that has encouraged people to vote for austerity, against their own interests and against the interests of the economy. This is what is now being questioned across Europe. And rightly so, because it is stupid.

That muddled economic thinking is what the politics of anti-austerity parties like the Greens is challenging. So the answer to the question "How will you fund this?" need not have an answer of the kind the aggressive interviewer is expecting (e.g. "we shall raise taxes", or "we shall abolish the armed forces", or even "we shall increase the national debt"). Because, actually it is austerity that leads to increased debt, and cuts to the armed forces, and ill-equipped armies, and a shortfall of income in relation to costs for health and welfare and housing. That is the problem, not the solution, so you should not expect an answer in that form to explain how the better welfare system and subsidised transport, and full public health service and education, will be paid for by the Green Party.

For sure, the Green Party does have a few ideas of things that are wasted expenditure, or immoral expenditure, but the reason for making savings there is not really because one must make cuts to cover the costs of the other good things that need money thrown at them. I mean, for sure, it will help not to be spending billions on out of date nuclear weaponry that is about as useful as the crown jewels but more expensive. But if we needed such things, we shouldn't do that instead of having a good railway infrastructure or accident and emergency treatment in hospitals. We should, in that case, have to do it as well.

So how are these things to be funded? How is the new government in Greece going to fund its new anti-austerity policies. How has it been able to restore free health care and give the cleaners a job again? The answer to this question requires you to stop thinking the way the austerity parties have taught you to think. They want you to think it is like a family with a fixed income to spend. But actually it is not like that. It is more like a business which makes an income by engaging in income generating activities, and inviting its citizens to invest their money in those activities and to make things happen. It's when things happen that money flows into the coffers of the state.

In fact there are two ways this happens. One is that when people (especially the poor) have some money they will spend it, often in local businesses such as the pub at the corner, or the betting shop or the hairdressers. The pub is less likely to go out of business, and instead will be paying rates, taxes and duty on the beer sold, and the people in the pub will be socialising and sharing ideas for things to do to, making connections for their businesses (You need a builder? I know one!) and looking after each other's mental health and welfare. The community is better off, there is less strain on the resources of the doctors and social workers, and the money gets back to the government in taxes to be sent out to the poor again. Similarly, if you give the students an income so that they don't have to work to live, they will spend the money they have on many things. The jobs they currently take will go to ordinary working families instead, who will need less support from the state and will pay income tax, council tax and all the rest. All this money goes round and round, because as business gets better (because there is money in the system) every business can afford to employ someone, or do renovations, or send out produce that employs delivery firms and other distribution methods. And every time the money is spent, tax comes in to the state coffers to be used in support of the welfare state. The system is like investing to get a return, not like spending a fixed income. The income is not fixed. It will go down if there is no productive activity going on. Which is what happens if you cut benefits and cut employment in public services, and cut wages and cut research budgets. You end up with nothing.

Where do you get the money to start this virtuous circle, if you have the situation that will be left by this government where the debt has gone up and no one has money to spend (except the very rich who have siphoned it off to tax havens or loopholes and are not spending it here)? Well, the answer is that you invite those who have some savings, and want to invest their savings in a secure scheme and for interest, to invest it in the government's own savings bonds. So the wealthy pop their money into your coffers, and you promise to pay them interest, or the money back when they need to withdraw it. That's fine. They need a place to keep their money, and you, the government, then put it to use on generating this active, healthy, well educated society. In due course, this will pay its dividends, in fuel duty, alcohol duty, income tax, council tax, business rates, VAT and so on. The private individuals' savings will have helped the state to get back onto the ladder of prosperity that can deliver a fully funded welfare state. And the fully funded welfare state is actually what prosperity depends on. Because you need educated healthy citizens, with an appetite for enterprise and a good environment in which they can expect their business to thrive, with a purchasing power sufficient to allow things to happen.

It is no good helping people to start a business by lending them money. Because if no one has any money to spend, the business will fail and you will never recover the investment. That's the wrong way round. Start with the people who need the services, give them money to spend, and then others will be able to start the businesses they need and make a living from them. Then you will get back all the money that went out to them, because it comes back in taxes and profits and increased spending power at every level of society.

The answer then? It should not really be "We plan to make savings here and here to fund this proposal" but rather "You don't understand: we are talking about making money, not spending it. This is the way you make money. Don't believe what they've told you in the past. That was a way of screwing money out of you to give to the rich. We don't do that. We give it to you so that it will come back to us, seven times over for every pound we spend on the poor and the sick and the aged and the disabled and the unemployed."