SOS NHS: Demonstration at Reading Broad Street today to secure future for NHS

This was part of SOS NHS Day of Action and saw demonstrators rallying for new legislation to secure a fully funded organisation and end privatisation.

SOS NHS is a campaign organisation jointly sponsored by several trade unions to ensure that the NHS continues to have a future.

Danny McNamara, who represents SOS NHS said: “We campaign for three co-demands - an emergency injection of £20 million to save the NHS this winter, good pay levels for NHS staff and an end to the creeping privatisation which we have seen drain off NHS money and tax payers money towards the profits of private providers.

“It’s incredibly important to everyone. Lots of people as you know are on the waiting list and there are currently 100,000 vacancies.

“Everyone working for the NHS is doing the work of 2 or 3 people, and the NHS is and has been for a very long time absolutely critical to the welfare and wellbeing of everyone in this country.”

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Activists and supporters marched down broad street and eventually congregated in front of Reading town hall where several speeches proceeded.

One of the speakers, Alison McNamara said: “I’m brand secretary for the National Education Union in Reading. We’re one of the unions and pressure groups that are supporting SOS NHS which is a campaign to fund the NHS appropriately.

Ex-mayor, Sarah Hacker spoke passionately at the town hall gathering.

She commented: “I am a local councillor but most importantly I am a result of the National Health Service. The NHS saved my youngest boys life when he was 9 and a half weeks early.

“I was at the speeches today because I really do appreciate what the NHS does for us and the fact that its free at the point of use.

“You see on social media where people who have been in hospital in America are faced with huge bills, and I can only imagine the terror that a premature baby would face around the world where there is no free health care, and thinking of the cost of keeping their precious child alive.

“It's so important, it’s so precious and we need to let NHS staff know that we’ve got their backs and we appreciate the hard work that they’ve done in the last 2 years.”

An ex-NHS worker who was at the protest in support said: “Doctors and nurses are completely burnt out at the minute.

“Some services are running OK now, but only because they are contracting out to private companies because there’s not enough of us and we can’t cope. When that happens, people resign.

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“The 2012 Health and Social Care Act was the first nail in the coffin and the 2021 one is going to go through because people don’t understand it.

“All this talk about accountable care and integrated care, but really, it’s dis-integrated care. And the accountable care that it was called before was not accountable to you and me, it was accountable to accountants.”

The Health and Care Bill, first published in July 2021, sets out the Governments legislative proposals for health service reform.

The British Medical Association has previously raised concerns that the bill provides ministers with undue political influence over NHS decision-making and that the bill could make it easier for private companies to win NHS contracts without proper scrutiny.

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Juliet Sherratt, from Woodley was one of the supporters marching with the organisation. She said: “Just knowing how badly affected the NHS has been by government policies, by the latest changes in the Health and care bill, and knowing that it’s so valuable and so precious to everybody.

“To ourselves, to our parents, to our children, there’s nothing more fundamental than your health care. We lose this at our peril so we must do what we can to fight for it and try to save it from the hands of people who would privatise it and be damned with those who can’t afford it.”