Why I’m marching for the NHS on Saturday | Letters

People ask me if I think the March for the NHS in London this coming Saturday (4 March) will make any difference to the way Theresa May thinks. I can only say that I can’t be sure that it won’t. There is a risk that a small turnout will signal to the government that they can complete their project to get rid of socialised healthcare with impunity. A big turnout with no obvious result may be taken – as with the huge anti-war march in 2003 and what happened next – as evidence that protest is futile.

However, it is our chance to show we still believe in the founding principle of the NHS and the reasons for which it has lasted 69 years so far: that dealing with the risk of ill health is a shared responsibility, and how we provide healthcare reflects who we are and how we value each other; “when you are in trouble, we are there with you”. We don’t see illness as a money-making opportunity and we want those who do to be sent packing.

Without the hole in the bucket caused by the market in healthcare and all its trappings, there would be enough money to pay the staff properly, to rebuild services in the community and to ditch the cuts and closures included in so many of the sustainability and transformation plans. We want the NHS to continue as a collective project and symbol of a civilised society. Come and march this Saturday to make clear that we don’t accept the lie that we can’t afford the NHS. The truth is that we can’t afford to lose it.
Sue Vaughan
Retired GP, Little Melton, Norfolk

• Polly Toynbee (Labour’s failure on the NHS is prolonging this crisis, 28 February) says that Margaret Thatcher “punished it [the NHS] with the internal market”. That was in the early 1990s. Since then the NHS has suffered even more from Andrew Lansley’s external market “reforms”. It is estimated that “commissioning” now costs the NHS more than £10bn a year. These are not costs spent on healthcare. The commissioning processes are extremely complex and few people understand them or are aware of their costs. The Labour party should be publicising these issues and urging mass support for the NHS reinstatement bill which is due to have its second reading on 24 March.
Joyce Rosser
London

• The nature of the “grown-up debate” called for to discuss funding for the NHS is another Tory attempt to reduce and finally remove the idea of healthcare available to everyone based on need. Tories and their rich media friends peddle this despicable idea so that we can be gradually brought to think that taxation should not be used to pay for everyone’s health. They want us to pay for our own. The poor cannot do this and they, therefore, will be left to be crippled and die from perfectly curable conditions because they cannot afford the cost of treatment.

No decent person would let another suffer when they could help and yet I fear the constant barrage of propaganda might make some people blind to the real aim of these shameful people. If more money is needed, raise taxes; if more doctors, nurses and beds are needed, tax us to pay for them.
Chris Coleman
Nottingham

• As reported, the loss of NHS data has many potentially life-threatening implications (Report, 27 February). Having recently been treated for cancer and its ongoing side-effects, I have discovered that my health trust does not routinely inform patients or GPs of test results. We are told that we will only hear if there is a problem and that “no news is good news”. This open-ended waiting is extremely anxiety-provoking when you are waiting to hear if the cancer has returned; hearing nothing could mean that I am fine, but it may also mean that my bad news letter has been lost in the system without anyone knowing.
Caroline Betterton
Chichester, West Sussex

• “NHS accused of covering up huge data loss” shouts your front page. Except it didn’t. The 500,000 documents were lost by a private company called NHS SBS, co-owned by a French company and the Department of Health, part of government. And it was Jeremy Hunt who did the cover up. So the NHS was the victim, not the perpetrator.
Dr Richard Lawson
Winscombe, North Somerset

• The subheading says it all: “NHS likely to be hit hard as private firms untouched” (Tax changes could prompt staffing crisis for public sector, report warns, 27 February). The NHS data loss proves yet again that outsourcing public services to private transnational companies is a disaster. It has to be. Service is not their priority. Profit is. Still the privatising of the NHS remains the government’s priority. It is the key element of its raison d’être. It will be interesting to see how St Theresa, having won Copeland “for the people”, will deal with her plans to strip their local hospital service to its bare bones.
John Airs
Liverpool

• Aside from the harm that has undoubtedly come to some of those patients whose clinical information went effectively if not technically missing, this issue seems to be a major breach of information governance as defined by the Data Protection Act 1998. If this sort of thing happened in an NHS workplace it would be treated as a serious untoward incident.

Any such SUI would be investigated and a part of that process would be the NHS duty of candour that applies to health providers and professionals. This was introduced in 2015 by the coalition government, of which Mr Hunt was the health secretary, and obliges staff to explain to those affected what happened and why. The duty of candour was in part a consequence of the Mid-Staffs scandal and the acknowledged need for greater openness. Failure to deliver candour can lead to action by the Care Quality Commission.

From what you report of Mr Hunt’s “perfunctory, complacent and evasive” report to parliament, he is in breach of both the spirit and the letter of his own duty of candour, which seems to be very unsatisfactory and should have consequences for him.
Neil Blessitt
Bristol

• We need to establish what the legal position is with regard to the establishment by the government of a private company co-owned by the Department of Health and the French firm Sopra Steria. The most important questions: who monitors their activities? And how are the profits distributed? Who pays for any damages? How many such joint companies has the government in operation at the present time? All NHS activities are monitored by NHS England – are such companies included and are they recognised within our unwritten constitution?
Dr Patricia Elliott
London

• Pricewaterhousecoopers, which, at the Oscars, failed to ensure that a small number of envelopes were handed accurately to an even smaller number of designated people (Report, 28 February), is more famous in the UK as one of the government’s principal advisers on the reorganisation of the NHS. It was presumably chosen for this role on the strength of its international renown as management consultants.
Paul Hewitson
Berlin, Germany