Hello

We hope you're all well in these very strange times.

The Health and Care Bill, that is currently being presented in Parliament, has directed our attention back to the Integrated Care Provider contract that you helped us to challenge in the courts in 2018/19.

We are campaigning strongly against the Bill under the slogan 'Kill the Health and Care Bill - Before before it kills us.'  

A dramatic statement? Not really. 

We seriously believe that the use of Integrated Care Provider contracts and other "demand management" measures enabled by the Bill will have just that effect on too many of us and could well be considered under the term 'social murder.'

We'll always be grateful for your support in bringing the dangers of the Integrated Care Provider contract before the courts. 

If you still oppose the use of this dangerous contract, please will you sign this letter to your MP?

Our view remains that it reflects poorly on the Supreme Court that they disallowed our appeal. Now all we have left is to push Parliament to scrap the Bill.

This might seem like a forlorn hope - but this opportunistic and vacillating government has already shown it will abandon unpopular policies if it gets enough push back from the public.

The Health and Care Bill seems to sidestep NHS England’s 2019 commitment that private companies cannot hold an Integrated Care Provider Contract

As we contended throughout the #Justice4NHS campaign,  even if private companies were excluded from holding Integrated Care Provider contracts, they would still be a disaster for the NHS and all of us who rely on it.

Because the contract will deny patients access to NHS care. Its fixed budget payment arrangement places the commercial risk on providers - so that if more patients than provided for under the fixed budget required treatment, then service standards would be at risk and patients’ access to care would be restricted.

But obviously the worst possible option would be if private companies - with the requirement to strip out profits to pay shareholders and often loaded with private equity debt that’s massively rewarded with high interest payments - were to hold Integrated Care Provider contracts.

In 2019, after a lot of public protest against the Integrated Care Provider contract - at least in part due to our #Justice4NHS campaign - NHS England conceded that only statutory bodies could hold the contract - meaning that private companies would be excluded from doing so.

This commitment was written into the NHS Long Term Plan, and the 2019 version of the Integrated Care Provider contract.

Now it looks to us as if the Health & Care Bill sidesteps this commitment.

Without going into the detail, it seems from NHS England’s Guidance on the Bill that private companies could have significant decision-making power over the procurement and award of big, 10 year Integrated Care Provider contracts that will cover all or most aspects of NHS care in the statutory Integrated Care System regions.

You can read more about this here.

All this is tricky stuff and we’re happy to be corrected if we’ve misinterpreted NHS England’s Guidance. But...

At the very least, we would like the MPs’ Public Bill Committee to produce an amendment to make sure that private companies cannot be members of Provider Collaboratives.

Even if we succeed in this, all an amendment would amount to is damage limitation.

It would not prevent the Health and Care Bill from fragmenting the NHS into 42 local systems, each operating a version of the USA's Medicare System, where a public/private partnership provides a minimal level of health care for people who are too poor or ill to pay for private healt insurance.

This is why we are campaigning strongly against the Bill under the slogan 'Kill the Health and Care Bill before it kills us.'

We hope you will take part in this last ditch campaign to protect the #NHS4All - please sign and share this letter to your MP telling them to vote against the Health and Care Bill when it comes back to the House of Commons in a few weeks, with amendments.

Because even with amendments, this Bill is so bad for patients and bad for staff, there is no way it can be made fit for the 21st Century NHS.

Thank you once again for for your support in bringing the dangers of this contract before the public, through our 2018-19 #Justice4NHS campaign.

Kind regards

Steve and Jenny

Hello. This is where we began. Click on the link to see where we are NOW! Thanks!

http://bit.ly/999PeoplesJustice

We are almost there! After pausing this page in May - while we developed the case with Leigh Day - we are nearly ready to launch our Stage 2 page and tell you more news about our claim to bring a Judicial Review.

The last two weeks has been a flurry of getting papers ready, checking and rechecking all our documents, planning and debating how to move ahead. Thanks to everyone who is helping us - fellow campaigners, solicitors Leigh Day, the advisors at CrowdJustice and everyone who have sent us messages of support.  Be on standby!

Thanks for your patience and support. After a number of letters between our lawyers at Leigh Day and Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group, they have just responded to our pre-action letter and the lawyers are now discussing next steps.   We will keep you informed as soon as we know the outcome.

Our lawyers, Leigh Day, are waiting for the CCG’s response to our ‘pre-action” letter. It is due in their offices before 4pm on Monday 19th June. The response we receive will then be analysed and discussed. Then we’ll know if we can get the case into the courtroom. We’ll keep you posted as soon as we know.

A huge "thank you" for your support so far.

We are now pushing the Clinical Commissioning Group to reply to our first letter. As expected they are playing games - treating our legal letter as a Freedom of Information request.  Luckily our lawyers agreed with us that this was unacceptable and they have sent a very "pointed" letter reminding the CCG that this is a legal matter not a FOI request. We will keep you posted when we receive their response.

Imagine how much more tricky they will be if we allow the Accountable Care Organisation model to go ahead?  "Accountable" does not mean being answerable  to us it just means accounting/money making.

If you are new to the case please read below and you'll see why it is so important to everyone.

Thanks for anything you can give. We appreciate every penny. 

Thanks 

Joanne, Jenny & Steve

and all the 999 Call for the NHS Team