Lisa Forbes NHS Special

The Orton Longueville City Council Election takes place on Thursday May 5th and as the day gets nearer I'm more and more excited about representing you and making a start on the dozens of issues that have been raised with me during the Campaign. As a local resident, I know what it is like to live in an area the Tories don't care about.

The Tories themselves realize that the Council can be better managed without them. They're busily outsourcing services to private companies (e.g. Enterprise) and charities (e.g. Vivacity). The Tories admit their education record is poor and have given our local secondary schools to alternative providers.

But this is not an ordinary election. The Tory-led government is using the global financial crisis as an excuse to attack the living standards and welfare of ordinary working people. They've wanted to slash the welfare state to ribbons for years and now they're doing it. People are so stunned by rising prices (inflation at 5%), pay freezes, job losses, benefit cuts, shrinking pensions, and lost public services they hardly know what to do.

Thursday May 5th, 2011 is your chance to get a message back to the Tory-led coalition and their minions on the City Council. Vote against cuts that go too far, too fast. Vote to tell the government that ordinary working people need help, not punishment, in this desperate crisis. Vote to save the NHS.

Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg like to say there is no alternative and no choice, we simply have to slash the welfare state and cut living standards for ordinary people. But this isn't true of the National Health Service, where they claim they're ring-fencing the budget. All the destructive moves on the NHS, none of them mentioned during the General Election, are a choice, the Coalition's choice. This is what they are doing:

• Mr Cameron promised the NHS budget nationally would be ring-fenced.

• Instead £20 billion in so-called efficiency savings is to be removed.

• There is no extra money to cover increased patient demand and increased health costs.
  

Peterborough Primary Care Trust has ordered 20 percent cuts, to be made immediately.

Many private health companies donated generously to the Conservative Party before the election.

80 per cent of the NHS budget is to be given to GPs who have been forced to form up to 500 consortia across England.

• Orton Medical Practice is under temporary management until at least December 2011so will be left behind in the scramble to escape the collapse of the Primary Care Trust.
  

• Hospitals and health trusts are to become independent; and will be allowed to borrow money and make profits.
  

• The Department of Health will cease to be responsible for the NHS. The health service will be run as a market overseen by a new Independent Commissioning Board.
  

• There are to be no limits on the involvement of private companies in health provision.

In a few years, there will be no NHS as we have known it.

This is why Thursday May 5th, 2011 is such an important day. Please vote to send a message to the government - TOO FAR, TOO FAST.

With your support, I'll use my term on the City Council to ensure that Orton Longueville is not a poor relation and that the interests of ordinary working families are taken into account.