Scathing Attack - Letter to the Crewe Chronicle 25/09/14

Thanks to Mick Roberts for his letter of 24/09/14, ‘Help for Masses, not just Rich Few’.

First he criticised the government for ‘privatising the NHS’. The NHS was effectively privatised under the last Labour government when it was sold down the river to ‘Private Finance Initiatives’, the debts for which now cripples our Health Service. Indeed, the debt burden of these arrangements is forcing 22 NHS Trusts across the country into huge deficit, necessitating bailouts from the taxpayer.

 

A recent report from the National Audit Office revealed that the repayments on these PFI deals made under Labour will total £8.6bn next year alone. Many of these loans extend for between 30 and 60 years. Perhaps even more scandalously, the report showed that the £121bn outstanding on these loans is for projects worth only £52bn to the taxpayer. We are literally paying twice, thanks to Labour’s ‘cooking the books’ and profligacy with our children's and grandchildren’s money.

 

I find it incredulous to hear Mr Roberts, and his party’s health spokesman, Andy Burnham MP (who signed over 220 PFI agreements as Health Minister) now criticise others for ‘privatisation by stealth’ of the NHS.

 

Mr Roberts also criticises the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement. He is right to do so. However, the enforced privatisation of the NHS should be the least of his worries about the TTIP. The ‘Investor-State Dispute Settlement’ clause gives big corporations carte blanche to sue democratically elected governments for policies which they believe their hinder their business, whether or not they are in the best interests of the electorate. It is an affront to democracy.

 

The TTIP agreement is being imposed on us by the EU, (as usual without any sort of consultation or vote in our parliament). Through his membership of the Labour Party, which is unequivocal in its support for the EU, Mr. Roberts embraces the TTIP and all its clauses without question.

 

He then goes on to bemoan low wages and the huge numbers of young people without work. Again, he is right to do so, albeit short-sighted in laying the blame. Rates for labour - or anything for that matter - are not set by the government; they are the subject of market forces – the ‘gravity’ of economics. 

The uncontrolled oversupply of (largely unskilled) labour from Europe as a result of Peter Mandelson’s ‘search parties’ has depressed wages and deprived our young of the service sector jobs which traditionally provide a first step on the employment ladder.

 

I bear Mr Roberts no ill, but I hope that in pointing out just some of the many ways in which Labour has betrayed British Working People, he and others will reconsider their misguided support for this disgraceful outfit.

Stuart Hutton CEng MIET

UKIP Crewe and Nantwich