After failing to deliver the promised improvements in health services in Oxfordshire over the last four years, New Labour now threatens to outstrip even the Conservatives as the party of privatisation in the NHS, Socialist Alliance candidate John Lister warns today.

Oxford’s hospitals are under more pressure now than they were when Tony Blair’s team won their landslide victory in 1997 warning that people had only "days to save the NHS".

• Waiting lists at Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals have risen from 7,000 in 1998 to 8,500 now.

• The Trust has over 300 nursing posts vacant, with similar shortages in other Trusts.
• Bed shortages have brought a crisis for local 999 ambulance services.

• Mental health bed occupancy in Oxford has rocketed from 84% in 1996-7 to a massive 95%.

Already Labour has made clear that they see privatisation as the answer:

• Since 1997 ministers have approved plans for new hospitals worth a massive £7 billion to be financed, owned and run by the private sector, and leased back to the NHS over the next 30 years. The rent bill for these private buildings will be a massive £2.1 billion a year by 2007.

• Last autumn, the government signed its "Concordat" with the private medical industry, under which more NHS patients are now being treated in private hospitals – with the taxpayer picking up the bill. This policy takes both cash and staff from NHS Trusts, boosting private sector profits.

• Continuing care of the elderly has already been largely privatised, with the closure of most NHS specialist beds for the elderly and the expansion of private nursing homes.

But now Labour’s election manifesto and statements by senior Labour leaders make clear that they want even more privatisation: they want to hand clinical services – the employment and management of doctors, nurses and other health staff – over to private sector providers.