NHS protesters took their campaign to Operose’s Fitzrovia offices in April. Photo Simon Lamrock. 

• AN online meeting was hosted by the campaign group We Own It and it highlighted the sudden emergence of a corporate giant working in our local National Health Service GP surgeries.

As previously reported Centene, the American health insurance company, is now operating in almost 50 NHS surgeries in London. These include Hanley Road and Mitchison Road in Islington.

The meeting heard from campaigners and patients, both our two Islington MPs, as well as Cllr Anjna Khurana, who is a patient at Hanley Road surgery and is currently challenging Centene along with other campaigners for a judicial review.

Centene’s move into the UK, with the their subsidiary Operose, comes at a time when everyone has been focused on the pandemic. It is both a cold and calculated manoeuvre.

There has been no consultation with patients, health workers, and the wider community for them to gain such contracts.

We have to question their motives in making inroads in this crucial part of the NHS. It seems less to do with looking after patients and more of a drive for profits.

As MP Emily Thornberry and others pointed out there are questions concerning the data which Centene holds, and how they may use it.

Centene’s move into NHS local surgeries can be found in the blueprint of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 – the act drawn up by the former Tory health minister Andrew Lansley, to open up the NHS to private marketisation.

There were 80 people online for last week’s meeting. As Jeremy Corbyn concluded at the end of the Zoom meeting, he echoed, Nye Bevan’s famous quotation that the NHS will always be in existence if there are enough folk prepared to fight for it.

We have to come together to challenge Centene taking a further foothold into our NHS.

The local Labour Party here in Tollington, unions, patients, the Labour group of councillors, and the community, are well behind Cllr Khurana’s brave initiative.

We must see the back of Centene from our GP surgeries. Contracts come up for renewal.

Anyone who wishes to raise their concerns can do so by contacting We Own It, or Keep our NHS Public for further information.

MICK GILGUNN
Labour Party Candidate for Tollington ward by-election