UK's Labour warned health reforms could cost election

LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair's flagship reforms to the National Health Service will come under fire at the Labour conference on Wednesday with unions warning the changes could lose the party the next election.

Unison General Secretary Dave Prentis will call for a halt to privatisation in the NHS and a new strategy for dealing with debt in the health service.

As party members debate the reforms up to 900 workers at NHS Logistics will be striking for the second time in two weeks against the transfer of the in-house medical supplies unit to German courier company DHL.

Prentis told a fringe meeting at the conference that NHS staff morale and patient confidence were being undermined by the government's NHS reforms and by job cuts made to meet budget goals.

"If the government doesn't change direction then we will not win a fourth term," he said.

The one-day strikes by staff at five medical supply depots are the first nationwide industrial action to hit the NHS for 18 years and come as the government pours record amounts of cash into the service in England.

But the introduction of market-style competition between hospitals for patients and a crackdown on overspending has been fiercely criticised by medical bodies and unions.

A newly-formed alliance of health unions under the banner NHS Together is calling for a lobby of parliament on November 1 to urge a change in government health policy.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said NHS staff morale was at "rock bottom".

"Budget cuts, a constant stream of untested reforms that are never given a chance to bed down and the fragmentation of the NHS by a dash to the private sector now dominate the NHS," he said in a statement ahead of the debate.

The Royal College of Nurses said specialist nurses were being targeted to reduce NHS debts.

Just under half of 460 nurses replying to a survey said they had experience of either their own post or that of another specialist nurse being made redundant, downgraded or frozen while vacant.

Earlier this year Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt was booed and heckled at a conference of nurses angry at job cuts and recruitment freezes.

Unison is protesting against the transfer of around 1,650 staff from NHS Logistics and the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA) to DHL, a subsidiary of Germany's Deutsche Post, on October 1 under a government plan unveiled earlier this month.

NHS Logistics was established in 2000 to source and deliver products ranging from food to bedding and medical equipment to hospitals, doctors' surgeries and other NHS organisations.

The government says the NHS will save 1 billion pounds under the 10-year contract with DHL by expanding the range of products supplied.

- REUTERS