Our chance to speak out and shape the future of the health service

» FROM the July 1, the NHS in England will be reorganised into 42 new local Integrated Care Systems. Our local ICS will be overseen by a board of directors and a new chair, Dame Gill Morgan.

The public were not consulted on this reorganisation and creation of Integrated Care Systems. We need to make sure these changes work for all our communities and families.

There should be no conflicts of interest. Individuals who work for or have a financial interest in private companies must not be allowed to be members of the ICS board or on committees that make decisions. We should end private provision and outsourcing. This means being transparent with local people about what decisions are being made, by whom and for whose benefit.

For the NHS (Trusts and Foundation Trusts), local people’s needs are the first, primary and, in most cases, only interest that matters.

Our NHS is under stress from two years of carrying us all through the pandemic and from underfunding. This has led to a staff shortage crisis and more than six million people waiting for care.

The last thing our NHS needs is for resources which could go toward fixing these problems being sucked out as profits and dividends to shareholders.

A positive aspect of the Health and Care Bill is that it is not too prescriptive and permits local NHS leaders a degree of flexibility in implementation.

Time to respond to the local ICS consultation, specifically a public commitment: to ban people who work for or have a financial interest in private companies being members of our local Integrated Care Board or any of its committees or delegated bodies; not to outsource or privatise any further NHS services and to produce a plan for a systematic programme for in-sourcing services currently outsourced when their contracts expire. Take action now, it will take less than two minutes: weownit.org.uk/ find-my-nhs