Published: 28 October 2009
Social Enterprise by Democratic Choice or Central Diktat
Unite, the union , is calling for a ballot of staff at Kingston Primary Care Trust (PCT) in Surrey over yet more proposals to hive off NHS services into a social enterprise.
Unite, along with the other staff side unions, will be asking managers at the trust, which covers 150,000 people, to hold a ballot of staff, as to whether they are in favour of transferring to a social enterprise.
The call comes in the wake of the Department of Health’s recent announcement that the NHS should be ‘the preferred provider’ of choice. This means that outside providers can only be asked to tender if a trust is deemed to be failing and has not taken remedial measures.
Managers at Kingston PCT are being asked to reconsider their plans for a social enterprise, which are commercial organisations, one step removed from the NHS proper, that can win – and lose – contracts to provide services to the NHS for a limited period of time.
If the social enterprise loses its contracts to, for example, a North American private healthcare company in five years time, jobs could be lost and services to the public could become fragmented. The ethos of a NHS providing a unified, joined-up service for patients could disappear.
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