Tories turn screws on elderly NHS
Page 3 tainment on the NS by Popular Productions ASSEMBLE 4.30pm Belvedere Rd London SE1 (by MARCH via central London to the Camden Centre, Bidborough St London WC1 (Kings Cross CABARET 7.30pm, featuring Rip It Up, an enter- Rd, London W12 ONS, tel 01- The London Hands Off Our NHS demonstration and rally on October 21 represents the most A strong showing on that day unions. the TUC and Labour Harry Sloan For a more detalled critique of the Clarke proposals, see the new London Health Emergency avallable now price E1.20 inc postage (single coples) or at discount prices for 5 copies or more - from LHE, 446, Uxbridge Hands Off Our NHS can also be contacted c/o 446, Uxbridge ambitious effort so far to break out of local isolation and link up campaigns in a common focus. Party to build the kind of resis- tance that can defeat this un- should he there - with their ban- pamphlet Cheap and Cheeriess, HANDS OFF OUR NHS! Tear up the White Paper! County Hall, Waterloo or Westminster tube) March ... Rally ... Cabaret Ambulance crews have learned thet industrial action speaks louder than words popular legislation. Rd, London W12 ONS. ners and contingents! OCTOBER 21 SATURDAY London 749-2525. RALLY 6.30pm responsibility of looking after suggest that so called informal expense of domestic misery for campaign autiorities, or fored to work for private employers. There are no words of reassurance on retrain- ments or on the future of their Clarke's statment makes clear that it is still govemment policy to foist most of the hur- den of care onto individual, lar- gely unpaid carers. This means continuing to cave as many as 6 million mainly women 'informal carers to shoulder the primary Research and estimates from the Family Policy Studies Centre care in the home is wonth any- thing up to E20 billion each year. larger financial savings — at the thousands of women carers - are clearly the target of the Clarke- ing, on pension and other entille- sick adult relatives in the home, (Sheffield) This is one wea where tube) the Griffidis proposals. Paper union and labour it has been left to the mass base of the for Patients has still not received the trade movement sup port to build on a national level: ad-hoc efforts by ners under the Hands Off Our NHS banner to seck to mobilise opposition to the local campaig Meanwhile: песеявягу Working against White The Clarke statement homes may well be run down, evidence that cheapest is best in mont of standards It is not yet workers in loug-stay hospitals payments made on their behall cost of cach place they provide subsidise places bought from the • Local authnrities will he obliged to work extensively with the private sector at all levels: even proposed competitive tendering services, despite the fack of any such labour-intensive services, cIcar how much of this will he White Paper and enforced by genatric wards uncertain whether the future would see them jobless, transferred to local ves, or manage lo satisty social private sector Some council Many will be effectively denied the right to choose residentin! care unless they are rich enough services that they are so severely disabled they are physically in- # In this way a considerable burden can be removed from the NHS budget, while further large яитя can be extracted - throughi mcans-lesting - from the life savings of the elderly, or from • Any real expansion of' so- cial service departments will be held in check by forcing local authorities to shoulder the whole in their own residential homes, while central govemment will and privatisation of domiciliary or any stipulations on eniorce- to cover the whole cost themsel capable of surviving at home. closed or sold off as a resulL repon thousands: of money is spent on the assessment of cach paticot will ensure that only the barc minimum of public individual. incorporated into Grilichs by relatives. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 18, October 1989 needs' uny the The combination of cash limits and new arrangements for proposals in the White Paper Working for Patients, which also the carlier report by Sainsbury's are I Local authorities will take services, while central government bolds the purse strings, imposing cash limits on both health authority and social • Funding for community care will come from redirecting ly made to assist elderly patients thousands of frail elderly people will be excluded from the free- al-point of-use cure of the NHS. and placed instead under the means tested care of social ser- ment, the Tory goverment 1s group of NHS patients: the frail tack on this vaincrable hut grow- revealed in July when Health government services, which would remove the lion's share of long- rem care for the elderly from the NHS, and place the respon would have far-reaching effects on tens of thousands of people, aims to squeeze the frail elderly ditch financial The full scope of the Tory ut- Secretary Kenneth Clarke un- proposals for community care The proposals, to be spelled nut in more detail in a White Paper promised for the autumn, with Clarke'x proposals, based on summed up in a pamphlet by responsibility for community sociai secunity payments current- In a deliberate pincer move- responsibility for the most costly sibility with local govermont. London Health Emergency boss Sir Roy Griffiths, patents out of acute hospital beds. neatly As a result, pay for residential care, ing group of service budgeti. dovetail the following: responsibility looking • care and
Walese: Is taking office Solidamose's "biggest mistake"? UPDATE This has not been helped by a and the failure of Party (PZPR) found itself in the aftermath of martial law: the party had (and has) practically no hase whatsoever outside the ranks sible exception of Ceancescu's Romania, it has a smaller base of support than any other regime in situation of absolute ccononus crisis — a foreign debt of $39 bil- of the bureaucracy. With the pos Jaruzelski's post-martial Solidarnosc? Eastem Europe. Will power bureaucracy, have been able to participate in the Polish For the first time since World War IT, representatives of an anti-stalinist organisation, in- nais a possibility of capitalist restoration. However, what do these developments mean for Lie the ruling The bourgeois press has repre- sented this in uncyurvocal terms- as a wonderful victory that sig-