Question: Is there a link between an increase in the use of private ambulance companies within the London Ambulance Service and the jobs/ posts that are being left vacant or going all together?
Answer: Not half there is!
When the Service published the Cost Improvement Programme (CIP) early in 2011 I wrote in my April posting (Coalition Cuts Are Weapons Of Mass Destruction) that “we can bet our bottom dollar that private ambulance companies are about to have a massive recruitment drive. There is a £53 million bait dangling in front of their salivating faces.”
This was in response to the shocking news that the Chancellor, via the Comprehensive Spending Review, via NHS London, had ordered £53 million to be withdrawn from the funding of our Service over five years. £10 million a year!
I also stated that “London will be a less safe place to be ill or injured if all of these cuts go ahead, no matter how much we tinker around with alternative responses.”
Private ambulance companies form part of this alternative response.
The chickens are coming home to roost!
We should not blame the London Ambulance Service (LAS) for this. We should not blame any particular management for this either.
What are they to do? It is their job to run a Service. The Coalition government has given us Catch 22.
All that said though, it has to be barmy, on the one hand, to be taking vast amounts of money, and jobs, away from a vital public service, while, on the other hand, spending large amounts of public money paying private ambulance companies to fill in the gaps that have been left because vast amounts of money, and jobs, have been taken away from a vital public service!
Dizzy chickens are coming home to roost!
I don’t like private ambulance companies but I can’t blame them either. They are formed to make profits. That is what they do. That is the point of them and they know, only too well, that this breed of dizzy chicken will lay lovely golden eggs!
So I don’t blame the LAS. I don’t blame particular management. We all should understand who the real enemy is.
The blame lies squarely with the Coalition government and their anti-public service policies. The blame lies with those who think ‘Private good – Public bad’. The blame lies with those who look the other way while a decent ambulance service is overwhelmed and set up to fail. £53 million cut from the budget over five years. 980 posts to go. That speaks for itself.
It would help, however, if for once the LAS Trust Board could stand up as one and say that what is happening is wrong. Wrong for the Service, wrong for the patients, wrong for the staff!
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Eric Roberts
Branch Secretary.
