Skip to main content
It’s time to call out Integrated Care
The Tories’ so-called Integrated Care plan is the Trojan horse for the Americanisation of the NHS — it even used to have the same name as the US system. So why is almost nobody talking about it, asks CLAUDIA WEBBE MP

IN the already inadequate parliamentary debate about the perilous state of our NHS, the discussion will rightly touch on the numbers of nurses, on the closure of wards and hospitals, ambulance waits, patients on trolleys in Accident and Emergency, waiting lists, cancer care and cancelled operations.

It will also sometimes – not often enough – include the intolerable burdens Tory cuts and policies are placing on NHS staff and the resulting risks to patients.

But it will never, or almost never, involve discussion of the government’s Integrated Care plan, even though it underpins and cements the harm done to the NHS by decades of neoliberal policies – and will lead to more and more patients not receiving the care they should.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Children sit and play on the remains of a tank, at the river
Features / 21 April 2025
21 April 2025

Keir Starmer’s £120 million to Sudan cannot cover the government’s complicity in the RSF genocide or atone for the long shadow of British colonialism and imperialism, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE

NO SAFE ZONES: Children walk by the destroyed house of journ
Features / 8 April 2025
8 April 2025
As Israel’s crimes escalate, Keir Starmer’s government must not subvert, block or ignore the investigation and prosecution of British citizens involved in acts of genocide, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE
DEFIANT: Mexican
President Claudia
Sheinbaum
Features / 10 March 2025
10 March 2025
With trade wars backfiring, allies resisting military demands, and approval ratings plummeting, Trump’s dangerous pursuit of colonial ambitions threatens to end the ‘American century’ with catastrophic conflict, warns CLAUDIA WEBBE
DAMAGING AGENDA:
Work and Pensions
Secretary Liz Kendall
Features / 24 February 2025
24 February 2025
Labour is deliberately continuing Tory policies that cost us £38 billion more than they save while driving illness rates higher — despite the evidence that previous sanctions doubled suicide attempts, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE
Similar stories
NHS workers on the picket line outside St Thomas' Hospital,
Features / 26 April 2025
26 April 2025

When privatisation is already so deeply embedded in the NHS, we can’t just blindly argue for ‘more funding’ to solve its problems, explain ESTHER GILES, NICO CSERGO, BRIAN GIBBONS and RATHI GUHADASAN

Features / 17 March 2025
17 March 2025
Behind Starmer’s headline-grabbing abolition of NHS England lies a ruthless drive to centralise control so that cuts of £6.6 billion can be made — even if it means reducing cancer services and clinical staff, writes JOHN LISTER
GETTING THE PULSE? Keir Starmer, and Health Secretary Wes St
Features / 25 October 2024
25 October 2024
FAWZI IBRAHIM argues that the NHS needs reforms to bring it back to its original tenets and outlines five fundamental changes that are critical to achieving this
WRONG ANSWERS : Lord Darzi’s ideas will lead to services l
Features / 24 September 2024
24 September 2024
CLAUDIA WEBBE warns that Starmer’s government is poised to accelerate harmful ‘integrated care’ policies, ignoring the reality that it is the decades of cuts and closures that have devastated public healthcare