16 September 2014updated 24 Jun 2021 12:58pm

Goodbye to the NHS: a personal story of a public service

Juliet Jacques worked for the NHS through many of the reforms of recent years. Here, she tells the story of her personal involvement with the health service, from the audible gasps and moans from staff as the Coalition’s new structure was unveiled, to joining the dole queue once her job ceased to exist.

By Juliet Jacques

(Photo By The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. Photo: Getty)

On the morning of Wednesday 20 October 2010, as I did every weekday, I logged onto a forum when I was supposed to be working as an administrator for Brighton & Hove’s NHS Primary Care Trust (PCT) and scanned the first few topics. “Is everyone lubed up and ready for Gideon’s comprehensive spending review?” began one post, referring to George Osborne’s extra £7bn of welfare and public service cuts, about to be announced after six months of Conservative-led coalition which had so far spoken much of austerity and the need to curb government spending, endlessly parroting its “all in this together” rhetoric, but which had so far only announced one of the swingeing reforms that had been feared.

“No need,” I replied. “They’ve done us.”