4th February 2022

Serco hospital porters and cleaners on strike
London hospital staff at Barts, Royal London and Whipps Cross who were outsourced to Serco start a two week strike. The mainly black, Asian and ethnic minority staff are paid 15% less than directly employed staff.

Another Nightingale hospital waste of money
Nightingale units set up in hospital car parks are described by Professor Karol Sikora, a cancer expert at Buckingham University as “an abuse of taxpayers’ money and a complete waste of time”. The hubs cost £10 million but only one has received any patients, just 7. He said “What is needed in the NHS ….is staff and trained staff.” There are 40,000 nurse vacancies in the English NHS, yet the government lavishes money on private hospitals.

PPE that cost £2.7 billion goes unused
5 billion items of protective gear costing £2,7000,0000 of the NHS budget is either defective or no longer needed.

Challenge to US surgery take-over in court
Operose Health, a UK subsidiary of Centene bought AT Medics, a firm that was set up by 6 medics. It meant that the US giant ran 49 surgeries in London. The merger created the largest private supplier of GP services in the UK. The request for a judicial review is being brought by Anjna Khurana, an NHS patient and Islington councillor. She claims she is one of 375,000 patients across London who were only informed of the takeover of their GP surgeries after the event.