THE news that Wirral University Hospital Trust has secretly privatised a 30-bed ward at Clatterbridge Hospital is a warning of what is to come if the Tories are not kicked out of office.
The profiteer in question, Four Seasons Health Care, has links to a firm of US speculators, H/2 Capital Partners, and is owned by another stock market speculator, Guy Hands, of Terra Firma Capital Partners.
This latest example of creeping NHS privatisation comes hot on the heels of plans to shut down five walk-in centres/minor injury units across Wirral - Wallasey, Birkenhead, Moreton, New Ferry and Eastham.
A sham "consultation exercise" on these cuts ends on December 12.
Sinisterly and significantly the forms sent out do not include an option to reject the closures, only two options for cutting services.
The people of Wirral are fighting back against these latest cuts.
A Wirral Hands Off Our Public Services (WHOOPS) campaign was launched at a meeting of more than 150 people in Wallasey on November 21.
A demonstration will take place outside the Miriam Centre in Birkenhead on December 8.
There is also a mass lobby of the Clinical Commissioning Group meeting at Birkenhead Town Hall on December 11.
Wirral's four Labour MPs, and the Labour-controlled council, must robustly oppose this clandestine NHS asset-grabbing exercise and give their financial, practical, and personal assistance to the WHOOPS campaigners and the Defend Our NHS campaign already underway in the peninsula.
James Roberts, Wallasey
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