Andrew Ford – Unite EC member for Health : build a strong union – on strong foundations

This post from NHS blogger Roy Lilley explains the scandalous plan from the Royal United Hospitals Trust at Bath. The Trust are planning to force all their bank workers into ‘Pulse’ which will save them money on the employers NHS Pension contributions. Of course, under NHS terms and conditions all work over 37.5 hours should… Read more: Bank work: ripping our members off – three times over!

Unite Branch Secretary and East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) Staff Side Chair Mark Dunne has been given notice of redundancy. Mark has been given notice that his contract will end on Tuesday 26 May.We believe this should not have been issued as no meaningful discussion has taken place regarding both roles or the impact… Read more: Defend Unite rep Mark Dunne!

This was my first EC, and the first of the newly elected EC. It only lasted 2 hours and the agenda was restricted to 1) to hear the report of the Returning Officer; 2) to elect the EC Chair; to ratfy the EF standing orders; to elect two Vice Chairs; to agree a new process… Read more: My notes of the Special EC held on Friday 15th May 2026

Vanishing NHS

The recent elections to the Executive of the Unite union, one of the Labour Party’s largest affiliates, returned a decisive majority for candidates aligned with General Secretary Sharon Graham. Sharon Graham: friendly, approachable and actually replies to emails! Her ‘Back to the Workplace’ candidates now hold 40 out of the Executive’s 61 seats, with 18… Read more: Some thoughts on the Unite EC election

Partly to my surprise I have now been elected to the Unite EC! Thank you to Unite members ray for the interview, Jamie fror getting my election address down to 299 words, Kit for help with graphics, and Rob for the photo. And all the branches who nominated me. Once there at the EC I… Read more: Thank you everyone for your help!

US firm Palantir already has a £300 million contract to connect NHS data. They have said themselves that they are “buying our way in” to the NHS, and recent revelations in the BMJ shed a little bit more light on what exactly that involves. Much weight has been placed by Starmer’s ministers on a pilot… Read more: Palantir and the NHS: More of the web revealed

The NHS signed on with US firm Palantir to provide its ‘Federated Data Platform’ in November 2023 at a cost of £330 million. Although until recently Palantir operated at a loss, it is rapidly becoming profitable thanks to contracts from the US government, including ICE, and the US military. Its software was been a key… Read more: Palantir – a corruption at the heart of the NHS

This is the much-vaunted Fair Work Agency, or what survives of it after Starmer’s repated wattering down of what was promised to the unions. Well done Sharon for laying it on the line. The Fair work Agency was supposed to enforce worker’s rights and give a meaningful inspection regime for low pay, bogus self employment,… Read more: Another let down from useless Keir Starmer

Thanks to Ray Goodspeed of Left Horizons for doing this interview. On NHS issues – what I was trying to say is that we have many, many issues in the NHS, but the model bequeathed to us from the previous regime simly does not work, The idea was that if a member has a problem… Read more: Video interview on Unite, the Labour Party and the NHS

Numerous studies have confirmed that of all health spending, that spent on mothers and young children gives the greatest return. {Why-Health-Visitors-Matter.pdf]. Maternity and Early Years care is one of the greatest examples of prevention before treatment. Which is why it is so disappointing that since 2015 the number of Health Visitors has plunged from 11,000… Read more: Health Visitors: the key to a healthy society

If you have a house infested with rats you don’t move out and leave the rats running the house. You get rid of the rats. The unions fund the Labour Party – that is the actual party, the offices, the staff, the leaflets and even the postage, The rich donors do none of that. They… Read more: Take BACK the Labour Party from the selfish out-of-touch clique who have seized it!

Nothing better shows the stupidity and emptiness of Starmer, Streeting and Reeves’ commitment to the NHS than the bombshell announcement of the abolition of NHS England in March 2025. Starmer was all dressed up, as he often is, in Hi-Vis as he made a speech at the Dettol research centre in Hull. The centre piece… Read more: NHS England Abolition: Beyond Stupid

An analysis in 2022 in the Health Service Journal (HSJ) gave an insight into the crisis then gripping the ambulance services across the country. All the same factors apply today, nearly two years in to a Labour government. NHS data shows massive variation between hospitals in the time it takes to discharge patients from ambulances… Read more: Ambulance waits are a symptom of a crisis in the NHS

NHS scientists are crucial to healthcare in the UK. Although they make up just 5% of the workforce, they are integral to 80% of diagnoses, conducting 1.5 billion tests each year. Their work of analysing blood and tissue samples allows medical staff to identify diseases and monitor conditions. Without the NHS scientific workforce (biomedical scientists,… Read more: The NHS scientific workforce: undervalued and under attack

Members of the union Unite were rocked by the revelations that came out of an Employment Tribunal for former senior official, Howard Beckett. The revelations concern the hotel and conference centre that the union had commissioned to be built in Birmingham. Among the many startling revelations from the Employment Tribunal (ET), one stood out a… Read more: The Unite hotel: An unbelievable mess and questions that need an answer

We had a Conservative government. They appointed Conservatives to the Board of the National Blood Service (as it was at that time). I was the union rep at the Blood Centre and one day in August I saw on teletext (!) that our Centre and 4 others were to close. Did we accept it? NO.… Read more: Our campaign to save the Liverpool Blood Centre