I was born just before the NHS was founded so it was brand new in my childhood, though I never really understood just how precious our public health care system is until I lived in the USA for two years in the 1970s. There I had to pay for every illness and show an insurance card for every accident. I was shocked.

I’m a member of We Own It’s board and my local KONP in Oxfordshire - KONPOX. 

People sometimes ask me: why campaign against NHS privatisation? I answer that first I saw the government starve the NHS of funding, and then I saw them handing NHS services over to private companies. When I watched the profits being made from this ‘outsourcing’ by company shareholders, I realised I couldn’t just watch our NHS being destroyed for profit. I had to take action.

We Own It and Keep Our NHS Public locally have worked together on several high impact actions over the past year. Now we’re gearing up to fight for NHS contracts to be brought back in house. This means our NHS running NHS services, not private companies running them for their own gain by cutting corners and our care. 

This campaign will support people like me to take action in key battlegrounds, alongside all of us asking leaders to take a pledge to end outsourcing everywhere.

Locally we want to make the most of a big opportunity: to use our alliance in Oxfordshire to focus on getting a major win from our local ‘ICS’ board’, the NHS decision-making body which now oversees how NHS funding is spent in our region.

Our local group is one of many ready to fight for our NHS in their region. 

We will be able to launch into action as part of this new We Own It campaign, to demand our local ICS Board brings a specific contract back into the NHS and run the service for people not profit. 

By working with We Own It, we know we can get national and local press coverage, build a big petition, and have the chance to work alongside other local groups. This is definitely stronger than working in isolation. Working together means we can punch way above our weight. 

You can make a donation now to help get this campaign up and running. Your donation will mean groups like ours can push for contracts to come in house all around the UK.

The big name health companies in Oxfordshire are Connect Health, InHealth, Circle, SpaMedica, Specsavers. I'm sure you will have come across company names like these in your area too - whether you live in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

We’re ready to fight to change this, so that the NHS is the main provider of our health services. And we know that the first step to this is to set a precedent and win one significant contract being brought in house in our region. 

We need all hands on deck. Profiteering companies like Connect Health or Circle need to find themselves under scrutiny in different regions across the UK. The impact of a collaborative effort could be huge. Our movement could inspire NHS Trusts to take our services back in house everywhere. 

And with We Own It’s BIG day of action, making noise about the 557 extra deaths caused by privatisation, we’ll link better health outcomes with insourced services, and demonstrate how wasteful private outsourcing is.

This campaign launches officially on Thursday 20th October. But you can donate now to help make it happen. 

Imagine if we could take our NHS back, for patients not profits. With the support of people like you, we won’t have to imagine. We can get to work making this vision a reality. 

We can open more people’s eyes, and we can transform our NHS from being privatised and underfunded to a first-class health care system there for us patients when we need it.

We Own It's fundraiser is closing on Wednesday 12th October. Make a donation today and help get the campaign up and running.