Since July 2012 Arriva Transport Solutions have been providing non-emergency patient transport for Leicestershire, Rutland, Nottinghamshire and Bassetlaw. Yet despite receiving a handsome £26 million contract to take patients to and from hospital appointments, today the Leicester Mercury reported that they have “failed to meet all its target times.”
Zuffar Haq, from the Leicester Mercury Patients’ Panel, said: “This contract has been a shambles from the start. It should now be withdrawn for failure to deliver and re-tendered.”
Of course these problems are hardly unexpected, and last year were examined at length by members of the Socialist Party in numerous articles.
- East Midlands: Save our ambulance service, August 29, 2012.
- Don’t axe our ambulance services!, October 9, 2012.
- Abolishing Arriva and NSL’s ambulance profiteering, October 11, 2012.
Axing ambulance stations and privatising public services has always been a sure-fire way for benefiting the few at the expense of the rest of us.
Our ambulance services must be taken back under public control immediately, and provision not only reinstated to previous levels, but improved to meet increasing demand. There is plenty of money in this country, it is just that our politicians — be they Con-Dem’s or Labour — refuse to collect the tax that the super rich prefer not to pay each year (around £120 billion no less).
Thoughts of a Leicester Socialist 