NHS Survival has a free and simple lobbying platform that allows registered users to write to their local MP. Hundreds of people have already used this opportunity to contact their MP and highlight what is important to them about the NHS and how it is governed.
Below are selected examples from letters sent via the NHS Survival lobbying platform (user identities have been protected).
If you would like to write to your MP, register with NHS Survival and use the free and simple e-mailing system provided to registered users.
To Robin Walker MP for Worcester, Conservative
As you probably already know, doctors (and most other healthcare professionals) provide a service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No consultant is able to opt out of emergency work. However, the current government would like to see 7 day elective care. This is something that no other country is known to provide. The DDRB report admits that this would be 'trailblazing'.
With an A&E crisis every winter and budget cuts that affect social care and ability to discharge patients from hospital, I would have thought that improving emergency care would be the priority for our NHS.
To Nicola Blackwood MP for Oxford West & Abingdon, Conservative
The group NHS survival has raised a number of very valid points, and I share many of their viewpoints. The NHS has suffered for too long under successive governments with top down restructuring, and 'solutions' which generally waste a huge amount of money and achieve very little. The most recent example is your government's Health and Social Care Act, which has cost billions of pounds that should have gone towards patient care and has failed utterly to deliver on its promises.
This needs to stop before we lose the NHS entirely. The NHS should be divorced from politics, or at the very least have a health secretary who has some (any!) healthcare experience.
To Nicholas Brown MP for Newcastle East, Labour
The government plans to forcefully implement changes to doctors contracts. In the last 2 months I have worked 6 weekends - 4 of these in a row, and the first 3 weekends were all nights. In the last few weeks I worked 7 12-hour shifts in a row (3 days/4 nights) then had a weekend off and then did the same again (4 days/3 nights). This is in a fixed rota which includes compensatory days off and annual leave in an inflexible pattern. As doctors we know that we have signed up for a career involving hard work, indeed many hours of unpaid work are put in every week by doctors across the country, at all levels, because we care about our patients. However, it is not fair that the Government plan to reduce safeguards for their doctors and reduce pay. It is very difficult to make decisions about a patient's health when you are seeing them during your 6th 12-hour shift in a row. Plans to make routine working hours 9am-9pm Mon-Sat are unfair and unsafe. We also deserve to be paid fairly for those unsocial hours - 8pm on Saturday is not the same as 11am on Tuesday, and I would refer you to the BMA regarding these issues. Plenty of other people are able to describe the issues in a much more eloquent way however the #50000reasons hashtag is a useful place to start.
I used to want to be a GP however I am currently reconsidering my options (including looking at working abroad). In the face of a dearth of GP trainees (in the North East, only 41% of training posts are filled) I wonder why the Government seems so determined to further drive trainees away.
Mr Brown I would urge you to consider carefully the problems that our NHS faces, particularly looking forward to the forthcoming debate on the "contracts and conditions in the NHS". Perhaps this will include considering the BMA's recommendations regarding the DDRB report.
To Sir Gerald Kaufman MP for Manchester Gorton, Labour
I am writing to you to add my voice to the millions of United Kingdom citizens and residents who have significant growing concerns and fears about the current state and future of our National Health Service.
For a modern NHS to survive, there must be long term planning and a true consensus. I wish to discuss with you the call by the group NHS Survival for an independent Royal Commission on the NHS. This Royal Commission would consist of patient groups, healthcare professionals, academics, Royal Colleges, NHS employers and representatives from all major parties (all members being free of competing interests).
To John Howell MP for Henley, Conservative
As a doctor, I’m not opposed to change in the NHS; change can be good. Indeed, medicine is fast paced and subject to constant change. However, in medicine there is one thing we hold in very high regard when it comes to looking after our patients, and that is evidence. As a General Practitioner I see changes happening around me in the NHS with no recourse to evidence, ideas which are designed to win headlines rather than help patients, ideas like Zumba classes for burned-out staff – things which are at worst insulting, and at best a complete joke. These changes are thought up by individuals with no knowledge whatsoever of what it’s like to be a frontline member of staff on the ground.
The NHS should not be a political football. It should not be kicked back and forth between parties, each one blaming their predecessor for its failings. It should be above that, it should have immunity from that, it’s supposed to be more important than that.
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