Leicester Greens have added their support to the campaign to Keep Our NHS Public.
Leicester Green Party has endorsed the emergency motion passed at the Green Party National Conference on March 29 2007, in which it is noted that "the 2.5% increase 'awarded' to NHS nurses and other key health workers on 1/3/2007 is effectively a pay cut as it is below the rate of inflation".
The motion states, "This is another instance of the grossly distorted priorities of the current government, whereby expenditure on inflated managerialism and wasteful privatisation takes priority over proper payment to key NHS employees. This is also the latest betrayal of the NHS and its founding principles by the Labour Party."
The Green Party is proud to be affiliated to the Keep Our NHS Public campaign, both nationally and locally. In Leicester, Matt Follett (lead candidate, Castle Ward) and other members of the local Green Party branch have been active in opposing the cuts and closures facing Leicester's hospitals.
Matt Follett said: "Mental health wards are being closed, local hospital beds lost and skilled staff laid off. The NHS internal market has massively increased paperwork, at the expense of front-line services. The government's own offices of public service reform have accepted that the UK's public services are the most efficient in Europe, and yet there seems to be a driving need to put us into debt through PFI schemes. This is leaving the taxpayer with a large bill and the public with no evidence of improvement."
The Green Party wants Real Progress on essential services. That means building a partnership between government, public sector workers and the communities they serve. It doesn't mean wasting our money by paying a private company £240m to provide a hospital that could have been built for £60m less on the NHS. That's not progress - that's an accounting fiddle.