Fight for socialist policies! THE PLEDGE by Labour's leadership to scrap the Tory 'reforms' to the National Health Service is perhaps the most radical policy commitment they will make for the election. Kinnock's team has been forced to the conclusion that the Thatcherite reforms - which have marketised and bureaucratised the NHS, establishing unpopular opted-out Trusts and fund-raising status for GP's as it paves the way for more privatisation - cannot be amended and must be swept away. Labour is now committed to: • SCRAP the anarchic 'internal market' system, which has cost El billion, bringing a bonanza for accountants, a paperchase of invoices, and the growing threat of haphazard hospital closures, all at the expense of patient care; •SCRAP fund-holding status for family doctors, through which a tiny minority of GPs have used 1 neir privileged position to ensure their patients jump queues for treatment, bringing a two-tier system into the NHS; • SCRAP the opting out of hospitals and services, abolishing the secretive and expensive apparatus of Self Governing Trusts', and bringing them back under the control of local health authorities;
NU PE NUPE No TRUsTe TORY IN THE MAKE BOArD TRUST YOU •L/ • OPEN UP district health authorities, which the Tories reduced to tiny rump bodies, by bringing back local councillors and by amalgamating them with the Family Health Service Authorities which run GP services. All this falls far short of a socialist programme for the NHS: there is no pledge to democratise the health authorities, only vague commitments on additional funding, no reference to nationalisation of the hugely profitable drug companies -and not even a pledge to abolish the prescription charge which 13 years of Tory rule has pushed up from 20p to £3.75. However there is still a real choice on offer, between a catastrophic fourth term of Tory offensive against the NHSwhich would drive further wedges of privatisation, means-testing and commercialisation into the most popular of public services, - and Labour's commitment to halt that process. Under the Tories the battles would all be defensive, while under Labour health workers and campaigners could fight for additional demands. If only Labour policy on the Tory anti-union laws and a host of other issues were half as bold and forthright as the new NHS policy, perhaps Kinnock's party would be ahead instead of lying neck and neck in the polls with the Major mafia!
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