Four years after the authorities at Southend Hospital boasted at becoming a foundation trust hospital, they have announced swinging cuts in healthcare.

At the time, the New Labour government denied the market system in the NHS was a threat to universal healthcare provided by the NHS.

The hospital trust expects 400 full-time equivalent posts to disappear over the next three years (May 21). It will have to scrap a new ward block which would have provided an assessment unit, critical care unit and new ward accommodation.

Under the market system, NHS hospitals compete with each other and private hospitals for patients and receive payment for each treatment.

The problem for the trust is that an expected £10million income from South East Essex Primary Care Trust over the next three years will instead be spent on primary care centres.

This loss of revenue results from the market system in the NHS and will have a destabilising effect on its finances.

The PCT claims the money it intends spending on the planned primary care centres, although on a reduced scale, will make up for the loss of healthcare provided by the hospital trust.

This is fanciful, since it has not conducted any pilot scheme to test whether diagnostic and treatment facilities in the primary care centres can replace hospital services.

Keep our NHS Public was formed to defend the principles on which the NHS was founded, and to oppose the market system in health care. We condemn the cuts in services, which those on Southend Foundation Trust Hospital are making and which will impact on the lives of thousands of patients and staff.

We also oppose the further cuts in the NHS, to which the coalition government is committed. Why pay bankers bonuses and cut NHS services?

Norman Traub
Southend Keep our NHS Public
Picketts Avenue
Leigh