Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt

A month ago, Boris Johnson became Prime Minister and put together a terrifyingly right-wing cabinet. The ideological vultures began to circle.

For decades, think tanks have attempted to shape government policy. Margaret Thatcher was notoriously wedded to the free-market ideas of the Institute of Economic Affairs. More recent Conservative governments have been influenced by the misleadingly named Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).

Iain Duncan Smith set up the CSJ in 2004 after his stint as Leader of the Conservative Party. The think tank claims to want ‘to put social justice at the heart of British politics and make policy recommendations to tackle the root causes of poverty’. The CSJ believes this is possible by reducing our economic dependence on the state.

Just before Duncan Smith became Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the CSJ published an upbeat-sounding report called Dynamic Benefits: Towards welfare that works, which introduced what it called the ‘Universal Credits scheme’. This informed the catastrophic introduction of Universal Credit. Many families in South Thanet have been made homeless as a result of delayed payments, and the majority of claimants are worse off than they were under the previous system.

On Saturday, the CSJ published the cheerily titled Ageing Confidently: Supporting an ageing workforce. This report recommends that the state pension age be raised to 70 by 2028 and to 75 by 2035. If the government adopted this plan, it would be disastrous for South Thanet.

In Cliftonville West, South Thanet’s poorest ward, men at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum can expect to live to 69.6. Under these plans, by 2028 these men would die six months before receiving their state pension. The average overall life expectancy in Cliftonville West is 74.5. If these plans were fully implemented, our poorest residents would die six months before they were due to receive their pension. The situation is even worse in Margate Central in North Thanet, where average life expectancy is just 72.7.

Ros (now Baroness) Altmann, who was Minister for Work and Pensions under Duncan Smith, has described the proposals as ‘chilling and immoral’. The Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, has condemned the idea of expecting people to ‘work until they drop’. We have seen the devastating impact of raising the state pension age on women born in the 1950s. The same dire mistake must not be repeated in the rest of the population.

The Labour Party will always be on the side of pensioners and help ensure security and dignity for older people in retirement. Labour will reject any Conservative proposal to extend the state pension age beyond 66, and we will increase the state pension to keep pace with earnings or inflation, whichever is higher. Voters must bear this in mind at the next General Election.

In a very worrying development, privatisation of the NHS may be entering a whole new phase. Private contractors are being offered the opportunity not just to provide services but also to commission them. This involves £2bn of mental health, learning disability and autism services. Read more here and here.

Labour’s Shadow Minister for Mental Health, Barbara Keeley, is spot on when she says ‘We have seen too many examples of private providers cutting corners, and not giving service users the support that they need. There is a real danger that any greater involvement for private providers means that a focus on the person using services is lost. It is not acceptable for private hospitals to be involved in commissioning decisions for services for which they are bidding’.

I was immensely proud to speak at Save Our NHS in Kent’s demonstration of support for Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital in Thanet. The written version of my speech follows.

Those of you who know me know that I don’t often wear blue in public, but this is one group and one campaign for which I’m proud to wear blue.

We’re here today to give our hospital a hug.

It needs our love and support at the moment, because it’s vulnerable – vulnerable to cuts and to closures.

Today it’s the stroke unit; tomorrow it could be our A&E.

Closing wards and downgrading hospitals is a travesty anywhere, but even more so in Thanet.

People are more likely to have a stroke here than in more affluent parts of Kent and more likely to be admitted to hospital as a result.

We probably all know someone who has had a stroke locally.

I know a man in his early 50s, a father, who had a stroke that left him unable to drive and severely affected his plumbing business and his family life.

Stroke can be devastating, and the one thing we know about stroke is that it must be treated FAST.

Closing our stroke unit is not just inconvenient. It’s dangerous and, we believe, illegal.

With the help of every single person who has donated to the fundraising campaign, Save Our NHS in Kent will be challenging this decision in the high court.

Now, I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if I didn’t say that our two local MPs have been less than effective when it comes to our stroke unit.

They’ve both flip-flopped between supporting and opposing its closure, but done very little in real terms to prevent it from happening.

They won’t and they can’t do more because it’s the policy of their Government to centralise health services and to starve them of funds.

Our new Prime Minister is very friendly with Donald Trump. During his state visit to the UK, Trump said that the NHS would be ‘on the table’ in any trade deal between the UK and the US in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

That, I fear, is the ultimate plan – to take us out of the European Union with no deal and to make us reliant on trade deals with America that include the more profitable parts of our beloved NHS.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

During the last General Election, the Labour Party pledged to halt the closure of all hospitals and wards.

If we had a Labour Government now, we wouldn’t be in this position.

I was proud to wear this blue t-shirt in a sea of red at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool last year, together with several of the people here today, including Councillor Gregory and Councillor Farrance.

We met Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Jon Ashworth, who told us he supports our campaign and promised to come and visit.

So there’s still plenty to fight for.

Together, we will challenge the decision to close the stroke unit.

Together, we will resist our NHS being sold off.

Together, we will hold the Government to account.

Thank you.

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve been elected as Policy Officer of South Thanet Labour Party. This post was created as part of the Democracy Review, to lead a ‘new people powered policy making process’. I analyse policy for a living and can’t wait to start discussing how this affects all our lives.

On Monday 22 July 2019, the General Secretary of the Labour Party, Jennie Formby, presented a report to the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) about antisemitism cases over the previous six months.

The result that interests me is that, of the 28 cases that were concluded by the National Constitutional Committee (NCC) between 1 January and 30 June 2019:

● 8 members were expelled
● 3 members received an extended suspension.
● 4 members received a warning.
● 1 member received no action, as the NCC found the charges to be unproven.
● 12 members left the Labour Party after being referred to the NCC.

I am the one member in 28 against whom no action was taken because the charges were found to be unproven. I am the thin yellow sliver on the pie chart.

The National Constitutional Committee is the Labour Party’s highest disciplinary body. It takes its role very seriously, free from political influence. If the charges against me had been proven, I am absolutely certain that action would have been taken.

Another time, I’ll say more about the cost – both personal and financial – of having to defend myself against a vexatious complaint. For now, let it be noted that the disciplinary process is improving. These latest figures compare to only 10 members seen by the NCC over the same period in 2018.

I spent Tuesday afternoon on the parliamentary estate with representatives from clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and public health bodies. They agreed that our health services work best when they cover the same geographical area as local authorities. I was, therefore, disturbed to read in Thanet Extra about proposals to combine Kent and Medway’s eight CCGs into four integrated care partnerships with just one of these new partnerships spanning the whole of East Kent.

Few people would argue that Thanet CCG is successfully representing the needs of our area or fulfilling its duty to tackle health inequalities. Thanet CCG was complicit in the decision to close the stroke unit at QEQM hospital, apparently guided by the need to make huge savings across the county. Every week, new evidence emerges of failures in our mental health services, which is most apparent in the shocking and preventable rise in suicides. Service for children and adolescents have been decimated, and Thanet consistently misses Government targets for counselling and therapy. In-patient services are underfunded and unable to cope with local demand. Save Our NHS in Kent has collected personal accounts of people who have been failed by the Beacon Community Mental Health Service, which make for distressing reading.

The projected rise in severe mental illness in Thanet is 3.8% by 2020; in mild to moderate mental illness, it is 5%. Thanet CCG’s Clinical Chair, Dr Jihad Malasi, argues in Thanet Extra that the proposed merger would ‘unlock improvements in care for patients and help us meet rising demand’. But it is difficult to see how these improvements would be made if decisions are taken by people with little experience of the reality on the ground.

One in five people visit their GP for non-medical reasons ranging from social isolation to money worries. NHS England’s drive towards social prescribing will increasingly see people being referred to advice, arts, exercise and educational activities in the community. The Local Government Association is responding to the opportunity this represents for the cultural, leisure and public health arms of councils to play an active part in improving population health and overcoming inequalities. This is a unique moment for a locally based movement to address the generational challenges facing our society. This would surely work best if Thanet CCG is working closely with Thanet District Council to respond to local need in a joined-up way.

You can read more about the plans to merge health services here.