Unions vow to fight Royal Liverpool Hospital PFI plan

Apr 14 2008 by Richard Down, Liverpool Daily Post

royal liverpool hospital

UNIONS have formed a united front against the Royal Liverpool Hospital being rebuilt by a Private Finance Initiative (PFI).

The North West Trade Union Conference on Saturday at Liverpool’s BT Conference centre, on Kings Dock, also registered its opposition to the British National Party which is fielding 31 candidates in May’s local council elections.

Alec McFadden, Merseyside’s TUC president, said: “From a local point of view, the campaign to stop the BNP and oppose the plans to rebuild the Royal Liverpool Hospital under PFI must be prioritised in the short term.”

The union’s opposition relates to a planning application approved by Liverpool City Council on March 18.

But the TUC claims that PFI “is a thoroughly discredited scheme which involves the public paying hundreds of millions of pounds to private companies over decades for a new, smaller hospital which will be privately owned at the end of it.

“Hundreds of bed cuts are already envisioned by the hospital management itself, with an unproven and unpublished strategy of switching care to the community given as justification for this.

“As a matter of immediate urgency, conference also calls on affiliates to lobby the council, local MPs and the hospital management directly to oppose PFI.”

The conference also elected a new regional chairman after the retirement of Dave McCall, of the Transport and General Workers Union, after six years in the post. Taking up the reins is Steve Farley, of the Public and Commercial Services Union, a Merseyside man and Everton supporter.

North West TUC members are supporting the uprising in Tibet against Chinese occu-pation, and are standing in solidarity with Chinese work- ers thought to be coping with inhuman working conditions.

CHINA ‘DEMONISED’: P5

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