Murnaghan 29.09.13 Interview with Frances O'Grady, General Secretary of the TUC

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now Ed Miliband’s conference speech last week was widely seen as a bit of a shift to the left, his energy price freeze and plans to seize unused land were crowd pleasers with the party but has it been enough to satisfy the unions? Well I’m joined now by the General Secretary of the TUC who is Frances O’Grady, she at Manchester to protest at what she says is an accelerated sell off of the National Health Service, there will be around 30,000 people we expect at their rally today, a very good morning to you Ms O’Grady. Let me ask you about Ed Miliband first of all, he revealed much more of his policy hand so to speak in that speech and at the conference, presumably you liked what you heard?

FRANCES O’GRADY: Well I think this is a shift in favour of ordinary working people. We saw the leader of the Labour party put himself on the side of families who are struggling to make ends meet and draw some clear lines around building new homes, creating new jobs and cracking down on profiteering on our energy bills.

DM: Okay, so you liked what you heard there, you’re not liking what you’re hearing from Manchester and particularly about the National Health Service. Now listen, talking about the Labour conference, we heard the Shadow Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, talking about market forces devouring everything precious about the NHS, isn’t that over-egging it a bit given that you all accept, don’t you, that the NHS needs some kind of reform?

FRANCES O’GRADY: Well we’ve just heard that in his first year the Health Secretary has put out £4.5 billion worth of contracts from the NHS to the private sector and I think that many people feel it is simply wrong that people who donate to the Conservative party should be benefiting from contracts, people like Circle Health.

DM: That is quite an assertion, is that why they are handing out contracts to private sector companies, to look after their friends?

FRANCES O’GRADY: Private health companies have donated millions to the Conservative party and organisations like Circle Health got a contract worth over £1 billion to run an NHS hospital. I think most people want NHS hospitals to be run by the public sector in the interest of the tax payer and patients and to give workers more of a say. I don't think they want to see people making profit out of people’s ill health.

DM: You are making an implication that Circle Health donate to the Conservative party and that’s why they’re doing it. That’s quite a conspiracy theory.

FRANCES O’GRADY: It is a matter of fact that the Conservative party draws a very significant sum of money in donations from private healthcare companies. We are also seeing increasingly American health companies circling the NHS, looking for a piece of the action too and that’s why thousands are protesting here in Manchester today on our national demonstration to say enough is enough, we don’t want the NHS sold off.

DM: But it’s not being sold off is it? Those are contracts which are being given to some private sector companies which of course is a process which we all know started under the Labour government and Mr Burnham was one of the prime movers behind it all.

FRANCES O’GRADY: Well what started as a trickle under this government has turned into a flood. It seems simply wrong to most people that companies like Serco, Virgin, United Health, should be making huge amounts of profit out of people’s ill health. We want to keep the NHS public, it’s too precious to sell off to the private sector.

DM: I’m just doing the maths here, £4.5 billion is a huge sum, you are absolutely right and if that is the actual figure that has been contracted out it is a lot of money, but do you know how much that is of the total NHS budget? 4% so 96% is unaffected.

FRANCES O’GRADY: Well I think we’re seeing under the Health and Social Care Act, parts of the NHS forced to put contracts out to tender so we’ll see a massive acceleration in the rush of private health companies to eat up parts of the NHS and most ordinary people simple don’t want it. We want a world class NHS system funded by the tax payer for people, free at the point of delivery according to need.

DM: So you want to see 100% of all services provided by the NHS provided internally within the NHS, all that expertise that may exist in private sector hospitals, that has to be taken in-house?

FRANCES O’GRADY: Look, I’m not saying that the pencils that ward clerks use should be made by the public sector but I am saying that it is a real worry when we are seeing this rush to privatisation, the selling off of key parts of our NHS to frankly the government’s friends in the private healthcare sector. People don’t want that, we want good local healthcare for people, not profits.

DM: You keep saying that, people not profit, of course an awful lot of unions affiliated to the TUC are working for companies that make profits, is profit a bad thing?

FRANCES O’GRADY: Nobody is challenging the right of companies to turn a profit but when we see the level of profiteering and rip off of the taxpayer that we have seen for example in the energy sector, I think we are right to ask the government who’s side are you on? Ordinary working people, ordinary families and taxpayers or private companies that are frankly ripping us off?

DM: Is that what’s happening in the NHS, profiteering and rip off?

FRANCES O’GRADY: I think wherever you have the profit motive the risk is that healthcare for the many comes second to turning a buck for the few.

DM: Forgive me for saying it, Ms O’Grady, but there are an awful lot of slogans here but with precious little back-up in actual fact. I also see in your press release you are talking about cuts within the NHS, well we know there has been a reorganisation but you know as well as I do that the overall budget is higher than under Labour.

FRANCES O’GRADY: Well no, in fact there has been a real terms cut in the budget for the NHS and of course on the NHS is being expected to find £20 billion worth of efficiency savings …

DM: How much, what’s the figure?

FRANCES O’GRADY: You’ll see it’s around a billion pounds in real terms that’s been cut from the NHS, we’ve already lost 21,000 jobs this year alone at a time when we’ve just had the Mid-Staffs report talking about the need for safe staffing levels and transparency in the NHS. The real worry here, and it’s not just unions saying it, is there is a running down of the NHS going on, running it down and selling it off and we’ll end up with an NHS that we simply don’t recognise. It’s one of Britain’s greatest achievements, I think it’s right that thousands of people are turning out to protest today to protect it.

DM: What is the task then for an incoming Labour government, if there is to be one under Mr Miliband, concerning the NHS because the only pronouncements that we’ve had from them so far is that they can’t say that the NHS budget would be protected?

FRANCES O’GRADY: I think the most important thing that we heard from Labour last week was that commitment to repeal the Health and Social Care Act which forces the NHS to put contracts out to tender which, as we’ve seen already, means that private sector health companies are sucking up work that used to be done in the best interests of patients and in the best interests of taxpayers, now being done in the best interests of shareholders. So that commitment to get rid of that bad Act I think is very significant.

DM: Frances O’Grady, thank you very much indeed for talking to us here on Sky News.