Tony Blair is facing probable defeat at Labour’s annual conference at the hands of union bosses furious over his handling of the National Health Service.

A hard-hitting motion demanding a rethink of the Government’s “headlong rush” towards marketisation of the NHS, tabled by public sector union Unison, looks set to be passed at the gathering in Manchester.

The vote comes as hundreds of workers at the health service supplies agency NHS Logistics continue their second one-day strike over the outsourcing of their jobs to the German-owned private firm DHL.

Labour’s leadership is also facing possible defeat for the second year in succession in a vote calling for cash for new council houses. The result of a card vote is expected to show a victory for a rebel motion calling for “direct investment to council housing as a matter of urgency”.

Mr Blair will be hoping attention will be diverted from the expected setbacks by a glitzy appearance by former US President Bill Clinton, who will address delegates on the need for action on climate change and poverty in Africa.

His speech will follow on-stage debates featuring Chancellor Gordon Brown, Live Aid founder Bob Geldof and London Mayor Ken Livingstone on the progress made since last summer’s G8 conference in Gleneagles on aid, debt relief and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Clinton, who brought a touch of glamour to the conference in Blackpool in 2002, has recently endorsed Mr Brown as a successor to Mr Blair, saying: “I have known him since 1990, and I think he’d be a good Prime Minister.”

But the NHS vote is likely to reflect the scale of unease among unions and grassroots Labour activists over the nature of the reforms, which have seen some GP services, as well as the NHS Logistics operation contracted out to private firms, along with the creation of independent treatment centres and the introduction of the “payment-by-results” system.

Unison’s motion warns that “immense damage” is being done to some local health services because of the massive deficits run up by NHS trusts struggling to balance their books due to the move to a “competitive, market-based system”.

The union cited the NHS Logistics dispute, a court battle over plans to contract out GP services in Derbyshire and threatened redundancies at the Royal Cornwall Hospital as examples of an NHS “once again in crisis”.

Source : Ananova

 Print This Post | | Save as txt

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.