7 March, 18.00-19.30. Central Hall, Westminster

Those who work in the NHS and those who use it are telling the government they must think again about their controversial Health and Social Care Bill.

The Bill is still in the House of Lords and this is our best chance to change the proposals before it returns to the Commons, where the government can rely on party whips to get it passed.

We still have time to stand up and defend the NHS – and show peers, MPs and ministers just how unpopular these proposals are.

The All Together for the NHS campaign are organising an evening rally opposite Parliament, to show the breadth of opposition to the Bill.

Please show your support by coming to the rally in person, or pledging to attend our ‘virtual rally’ live online.

We’ll be asking those who can’t get to London to tune in for a webcast of the live event, and to make as much noise online as they can. Tweet about it, blog and comment about it, or share it on social networks. We can get the internet buzzing in a way the government can’t ignore.

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Organised by the All together for the NHS campaign – health professionals, patients and the public standing up for our NHS.

There’s some good news to report after Wednesday night’s debate and vote in the House of Lords. The government suffered three major defeats, with amendments passed that meant:

• The Bill’s limit on Employment Support Allowance will be increased to at least two years (not one as planned).
• Cancer patients will be exempt from the ESA time limit.
• Young people disabled before they are able to build up qualifying contributions will not be denied access to ESA.

These three unexpected defeats for the government give real hope for more progress in winning changes to this hugely damaging Bill. As crossbench Peer Lord Patel said in the debate:

“I am sympathetic to cutting the deficit, but I am highly sympathetic to sick and vulnerable people not being subjected to something that will make their lives even more miserable.”

We’re glad we could help support this important work by a group of committed and resourceful campaigners. Disabled activists have moved mountains on this through their own hard work and organisation, and deserve huge credit for what they’ve achieved so far.

Sue Marsh, one of the lead authors of the Spartacus Report has a good post on her blog, explaining where these victories on amendments and the Spartacus report fit into the wider concerns with the Welfare Reform Bill for disabled people.

The threat is far from over though, with proposals still on the table that will lead to very real hardship for many disabled people and other vulnerable people who need support from our benefits system.

If you contacted a Peer about the Spartacus report, have a look at the voting record on the amendments to see how they voted. If they supported amendments, why not drop them an email to thank them for their help?

If you helped spread the word online, please help get out word of this initial victory. Making sure everyone knows about the government’s comprehensive defeat in this first skirmish in the Lords will help greatly in setting the tone for the next debates and amendment votes that are coming next Tuesday.

We’re very concerned about many of its implications, especially on disabled people, large numbers of whom face a reduction in benefits as the universal benefit Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is replaced by the more conditional benefit system of Personal Independence Payments (PIP).

DLA is currently available to disabled children and adults to help them meet the extra costs associated with having a disability. It’s not work or contribution dependent, and it comes at different levels, to take into account assessed needs for ongoing help with care and mobility.

Under the new system, DLA recipients will have to claim again for PIP, and given that the government have stated they want to make savings by focussing the benefit on those who need it most, it’s a fair bet many who were found to need assistance under the lower levels of DLA payment will no longer be given assistance. Also, increasing the initial qualifying period from 3 to 6 months will see many people face extra months of hardship before they get assistance.

Many current DLA recipients will face a further blow if they’re denied access to PIP, as DLA is a qualifying benefit, which means that being assessed to receive it then means you are eligible for other assistance. Losing DLA will see people getting those other benefits withdrawn.

With such severe cuts for thousands of vulnerable people, you’d think the government would be scrupulous about understanding the impact of the reforms. But the consultation for the Bill has been rushed through, run for two weeks shorter than usual, and with the legislation presented to Parliament before the consultation was even finished.

A group of disabled activists have come together online to research the reforms. They’ve used Freedom of Information powers to get a copy of the consultation results, and conducted a thorough crowdsourced analysis of the previously unreleased documents.

The “Responsible Reform” report that they have written and produced tells a remarkable story, with 74% of organisations and individuals responding to the consultation opposed to the overall plans, and even higher margins against on specific measures, such as 98% opposing the extension of the period people have to wait to receive benefits. This tells a rather different story to the government’s claims of support from the consultation responses.

With only days to go now, Peers need to know what respondents, from charities working with disabled people through to Mayor of London Boris Johnson have said about the danger of these reforms.

What can you do?

You can find the report online here. Please have a look at it (there’s a helpful summary at the beginning, as there’s a lot of material in there) and help get this important information used as widely as possible, by taking any or all of these actions online:

1 Tell your friends

Please tweet about the report, or spread the message to friends. The hashtag #SpartacusReport has been trending today, so please use that if you can to keep it in the public eye online.

2 Tell the House of Lords

Please help spread word of this important report to Peers. Use the They Work For You site to find a member of the House of Lords to email – If you can only write to one, please focus on the Liberal Democrat or Crossbench Peers, who are more likely to change their vote over this issue. Getting a message to them Thursday’s report stage will help ensure they don’t go into the debate without knowing the concerns of thousands of disabled people from all over the country.

3 Add your name

And please if you’ve not yet signed up, add your name to Pat Onions’ petition to Number 10 for a pause in these hurried reforms – it’s reached over 10,000 signatures now, but needs more to be recognised by government. Rushing this legislation through at a time of spending cuts and economic difficulties for vulnerable people is creating a perfect storm for many disabled people. A pause to ensure reform is carried out more fairly and effectively is desperately needed.

If you have concerns about the Bill too, the Peers need to hear from you.

But contacting Peers is difficult as they don’t have constituency responsibilities like MPs.

However when Peers are ennobled, they adopt the name of a place with which they have an affinity. It has to be stressed that they don’t necessarily live there, and there’s absolutely no responsibility on them to look after the interests of this area, or take representation from residents, but as they get to choose it, it’s a fair bet they’ll know more about the location, and care about it.

If you have experience and concerns on the health service in your particular area, you can use this to find a Peer who may be more aware of the situation.

We’ve mapped the Peers to their chosen or hereditary locations. Zoom in to your area, and you’ll see the Peers listed as ‘nearest’ to you. If your nearest Peer has a dot on their marker, you can click through to our mailer tool to write them an email about the Health and Social Care Bill.

If you’ve a choice, try to focus on crossbench (non party aligned) or Liberal Democrat Peers, as they may be more likely to consider switching to vote against some aspects of the Bill.

Once you’ve written to them, returning to our Adopt a Peer (random Peer allocation) tool and entering the same email address will match you up again with the same Peer, if you want to make a follow up contact.

Launch the local Peer map now

French Robin Hood campaigners present a petition to Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of the G20. Photo French Foreign Ministry

Could this week’s G20 see a real chance for progress toward a Robin Hood Tax?

Bill Gates has prepared a report for the conference, proposing amongst other things a Financial Transaction Tax, and several world leaders have already expressed an interest in the idea.

One country that’s been rather more silent is the UK. Officially the government is not adopting a strong position either way, but have been mostly opposing it in private. We really need the UK to come off the fence and allow the initiatve a chance – any blocking moves by the UK could be very damaging.

If you’ve not yet used our action to write to David Cameron ahead of his trip on Thursday, please do.

And even if you have, please pop over to 38 Degrees to sign the mega-petition they’re gathering to present to the Prime Minister – it’s topped 100,000 already.

We’ve just had the demoralising news that the Bill has passed its second reading in the House of Lords, and Lord Owen and Lord Hennessy’s amendment to take the most controversial parts into a Special Select Committee was not successful, failing by 34 votes.

This is far from the end though.

The Bill will now go into the House of Lords committee and report stages before its third reading and final vote in the Lords. This could take some time, as there will be a lot of debate on it, and a chance for further amendments to be brought forward before the next reading.

We’ll keep you informed on what’s happening, and what we can do about it next.

In the meantime, if you wrote to a Peer who replied and said they’d be voting for Lord Owen’s amendment, why not use the Adopt A Peer tool to write back and thank them for their support? You can find voting records on both yesterday’s amendments at Hansard (split over several pages).

Nye Bevan’s famous quote is getting a lot of airing today, but it really can’t be said often enough:

“The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it”

But despite the record profits and growth, Sotheby’s in New York is refusing to negotiate fair working conditions with its art handlers – the people who care for and transport the extremely valuable items they auction.

Please help lobby the senior management of Sotheby’s in Europe now, to reach a settlement in the US.

Instead of recognising and rewarding the contribution these workers have made to the company’s success, Sotheby’s look to be trying to make a quick buck on their staffing bill by cutting corners in the art handling department.

The company has presented the workers with new contract terms including shorter hours, lower pay, no pensions, and some skilled art handling staff being replaced by unskilled and cheaper temps.

The workers (members of the US Teamsters union) refused the new terms, but rather than negotiate, Sotheby’s decided to lock out all their art handlers, without pay, and outsourced all the jobs to unskilled temps.

Meanwhile, Sotheby’s rewarded its New York based CEO, William Ruprecht, by doubling his annual salary to almost $6 million.

Is Sotheby’s putting irreplaceable and fragile pieces of art at risk? Auctioneers may sell the art, but art handlers are responsible for the transportation, preparation and display of each piece.

Some of the locked out art handlers have more than 40 years of experience protecting art. Replacing these individuals with temporary workers is a risk not worth the comparatively small savings this unfair move will make.

The Teamsters at Sotheby’s (Local 814) have asked for help from the UK, as the company was founded here, and London remains a key market for them.

Please join us in writing to Melanie Clore, Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, and The Hon James Stourton, Sotheby’s UK Chairman, asking them to put pressure on Sotheby’s New York to negotiate a fair new contract with the locked out workers. The company need to:

• End the unfair lockout
• Drop demands to replace professional art handlers with untrained temps
• Remove the insistence on severe pension and pay cuts, despite record profits

Please help lobby the senior management of Sotheby’s in Europe now.

TUC vigil during the Commons vote. Photo Jess Hurd, reportdigital.co.uk

The House of Commons have now voted through the government’s controversial Health and Social Care Bill, and passed it on to the House of Lords as the next step towards becoming law.

Despite the government’s “listening exercise” and changes to the Bill, what was passed in the Commons yesterday is still a toxic combination of competition, markets and fragmentation that strikes at the founding principles of the NHS. To take just a few examples of the areas where we still have serious concerns:

• The Bill means increased competition instead of collaboration. This is despite evidence that the NHS is one of the most cost effective health care systems in the world – much more so than in the USA, where competition is central. Plans to allow ‘Any Qualified Provider’ to deliver NHS services will open up swathes of the NHS to private and voluntary sector providers.

• It still means private patients jumping the queue. The Bill removes the cap on the amount of money NHS hospitals can make from private patients. This could mean NHS patients being pushed to the back of the queue for care. With foundation trusts strapped for cash, the temptation to prioritise paying patients will be strong.

• It means a fragmented system and lack of accountability. The government would no longer have a direct duty to provide a comprehensive health service. It would be up to local commissioning groups to determine what to provide as part of the NHS. This could intensify postcode lotteries for care.

• There are still fears about transparency. Private and voluntary sector providers will have a much bigger role delivering NHS services if the Bill goes through, but the Bill doesn’t hold them to the same standards of transparency as NHS providers.

• The reform is getting even more expensive. On the tightest financial settlement in many years, the NHS is also being asked to make ‘efficiency savings’ of £20bn by 2014-15. The cost of the reorganisation is estimated to be up to another £3bn. We already know that tens of thousands of jobs are being cut, including clinical posts.

Despite the Commons vote, the campaign to halt this Bill is not stopping here. With senior Liberal Democrat Peers concerned about the repercussions of the Bill, there could be a lot of scope for resistance and amendments to it. We’ll be pressing Peers of all parties to take an active role in the debate and to listen to the widespread concerns of NHS service users and staff about the risks to the future of our National Health Service.

What can you do?

We’re asking people to adopt a Peer for the coming debates. Write to them to let them know your concerns, and how much we expect from them, now they’re carrying the responsibility for the future of our NHS. We’ll be asking you to write to them several times, focusing on different issues and amendments.

Adopt a Peer now

And keep making a noise about the NHS wherever you can. The media and the public need to know that not everyone is convinced that the Bill has fundamentally changed, and that it still represents the greatest threat to the NHS in the 63 years since it was founded. We’ll be back with more on this very soon.