Brighton, a massive campaign should be launched in every sector of the workers movement to get support for the demand that Labour impleOrder copies of the petition from Dr Paul Stern, 55 Bridge Lane, cuts We the undersigned are totally opposed to the way that the National Health Service is being savagely cut and run down. An already sick and declining health service is now in real danger of falling apart with all the dreadful consequences that entails for working people whose health and very lives are put in danger.
We therefore support the lobby of the Labour Party Conference called by the National Coordinating Committee Against Cuts in the NHS and urge that the Labour Party Conference implements the resolution that it carried last year on the NHS. The resolution read as follows: -This Conference views with concern the inadequacies of the National Health Service and calls upon the leadership of the Labour and trade union movement to pledge itself to a socialist policy for the Health Service.
Conterence theretore. (a) rejects any cuts in the National Health Service and demands a very substantial immediate increase in health expenditure to recruit new staff, pay adequate wages, provide attractive career structures at all levels, replace outmoded buildings and ensure the provision of an equally high standard of health service facilities throughout the United Kingdom, and believes tnat in tuture nearn expenditure snould be linkee to price and wages indices to protect the National Health Service from further cuts; (b) calls for a free National Health service at the point-of-use with complete abolition of prescription, dental and other charges; (c) welcomes the proposed removal of private practice from the National Health Service but is concerned that it be completed rapidly and that existing part-time con tracts must end. It further demands that the long-term aim of the Labour Party be the total abolition of private practice with all private medical care outside the Nation al Health Service under Government control as a first step and the prohibition of all private patient insurance plans; (d) demands the public ownership of the pharmaceutical and other industries which (e) demands the abolition of all nursing agencies and the rapid move by the National Health Service towards the non-use of agency staff or outside contractors for any (f) calls for all management bodies to be democratically elected and to include elected representatives of all grades of employees within the service; (g) calls for an extension of occupational preventative and rehabilitation health care schemes with a major expansion in the number of health centres; (h) calls for extended facilities for pregnancy testing, contraception, and abortion so that they are available to all women on request, free of charge, and opposes moves to restrict the availability of abortion on social grounds.
Conference, desperately alarmed at the stagnation in morale and innovation in the National Health Serviee and concerned at the continued erosion and constant amendment of olans for the future. calls upon the Government to publish within one year a major White Paper embodying a Ten Year Plan for the development of