(This is shared from Defend Our NHS and 999 Call for the NHS).

Dear friend of the NHS

Please urgently help to annul the Dept of Health’s stealth changes to legislation about how GPs work

Please will you help to stop the government from bypassing MPs as it sneaks in big changes to the way GPs work?

All it takes is to ask your MP to support National Health Service Early Day Motion #2103.

You can download this template letter to MPs and change it in any way you like. You can find your MP’s contact details here.

Regulatory changes that bypass MPs’ scrutiny and debate

NHS England knows that 999 Call for the NHS has applied for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court against the contentious Integrated Care Provider contract (formerly called the Accountable Care Organisation contract).

But the NHS Long Term Plan has announced that the NHS England quango will make the contract available for use in 2019.

To enable this, on 13th February the Department of Health sneakily introduced big changes to the way GPs work, without giving MPs any say in the matter. It did this through Statutory Instrument 2019 No. 248 – The Amendments Relating to the Provision of Integrated Care Regulations 2019.

Statutory Instrument 2019 No. 248 makes major changes to the existing contractual arrangements for providing GP Primary Care services. These changes are to enable Integrated Care Providers (formerly called Accountable Care Organisations) to run a whole range of hospital, primary care and community health services for their given area and its population.

Now Jeremy Corbyn, Jon Ashworth and other MPs are sponsoring a Prayer Motion (National Health Service EDM #2103) that calls for the Statutory Instrument’s annulment:

“That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Amendments Relating to the Provision of Integrated Care Regulations 2019 (S.I., 2019, No. 248), dated 13 February 2019, a copy of which was laid before this House on 13 February 2019, be annulled.”

Please will you call on your MP to support this PRAYER MOTION?

Time is short. The deadline for the Prayer Motion is 24 March. The Statutory Instrument is due to take effect on 1 April.

Please visit this web page to find out more.

The last time a “prayer” was answered was in 2000. If it succeeded then it can succeed again. But it needs us all to push it, so that it has wide support from MPs.

Please get in touch if you need any further help or information.

WHY WE’RE ASKING FOR YOUR HELP

Statutory Instrument 2019 No. 248 makes major changes to the existing contractual arrangements for providing GP Primary Care services.

It would enable new Integrated Care Providers (formerly called Accountable Care Organisations) to directly employ GPs to deliver a model of primary, mental health and community health care that would radically change patients’ (and GPs’) experience of the NHS. This is likely to damage an area’s NHS organisations AND the health needs of the public.

Recent reports by the National Audit Office and the Nuffield Trust say there is no evidence that this new model would meet the intended aims of reducing costs and improving quality of patient care. And the Chair of the BMA has told GP members they‘should not feel pressured into entering an Integrated Care Provider contract as to do so could leave their patients worse off.’

We must take this seriously. We feel strongly that these major changes should not slide through Parliament in secondary legislation without any oversight by MPs.

THERE IS HOPE

Getting this Prayer Motion passed is a long shot. But we hope you’ll agree it’s worth trying. The stakes are high and we should seize any chance of stopping this undemocratic move by the Dept. of Health and NHS England.

If a Prayer Motion succeeded in 2000, then it can succeed again.

The Integrated Care Provider contract aims to “manage demand” for NHS care

This means it could threaten patient safety standards and restrict patients’ access to treatments.

Standards of NHS care are already under pressure, and all of us will have begun to see restricted access to a full range of high quality health care in our local areas.

The Integrated Care Provider contract is set to make this worse.

In and out of the courts, we continue to oppose its introduction.

Thanks and best wishes on behalf of Defend Our NHS