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Brent council must convene an urgent meeting of the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee to consider NHS proposals to cut the opening hours of the Urgent Treatment Centre at Central Middlesex Hospital by 3 hours a day, 21 hours a week.

In 2014, Central Middlesex Hospital A&E Department closed following a decision from the then Conservative Heath Secretary Jeremy Hunt. At the time, the community was told that the opening of an Urgent Care Centre at Central Middlesex hospital would mitigate the loss of the A&E department. However, in 2019, the hours of the Urgent Care Centre were reduced when the overnight Service Centre was withdrawn.

Six years down the line, patients are faced with yet another reduction of the renamed Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC). The Centre currently closes at midnight but, if London NW University Healthcare Trust go ahead with their proposal, it will close at 9pm.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION:-

https://democracy.brent.gov.uk/mgEPetitionDisplay.aspx?ID=341&RPID=353189469&link_id=2&can_id=f19ffbc39baa96b4402c728f16e4350d&source=email-urgent-sign-our-petition-today&email_referrer=email_3030580&email_subject=urgent-sign-our-petition-today&&

Plenty of doctors in orange and film crews were drawing car, van and bus horns to hoot solidarity. This trainee surgeon explained the action. His thrust was that doctors are striking to fix the NHS for patients because the Labour government has headed off on a wrong trajectory.

The strike continues for five days. The secretary of state, Wes Streeting, has failed to meet the BMA. Instead he has gone public spitting propaganda rants. Somehow he thinks it makes sense to attack his own workers, oblivious to the fact that the public trust them far more than they do politicians like him. He seems rather rattled.

SHA members joined other BMA picket lines around the country. Here are images from Royal Infirmary Newcastle and Cumberland Infirmary Carlisle.

From 7 – 9 pm on Wednesday, 21 January 2026 at Effra Social, 89 Effra Road, Brixton, SW2 1DF

Leading the discussion, Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP and Rathi Guhadasan, SHA Chair.

(Cash bar with hot food)

Resident doctors in England, represented by the BMA, are set to strike again, following the government’s failure to address years of pay erosion and a deepening workforce crisis.

Unsafe training bottlenecks, unrealistic job requirements, and collapsing real terms pay leave no alternative. It is a ridiculous situation: the public is desperate for more doctors, while fully qualified recent graduates are unable to find posts.

Strike dates: Full walk outs from 7:00am Wednesday 17 to 7:00am Monday 22 December.

Details of picketing TBA – watch this space.

One hundred thousand determined protestors of all ages and backgrounds marched again today in high spirits, determined to do so until Palestine is a sovereign state protected from Israeli aggression.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP rewarded the marchers with a superb speech, as did others too, in particular Chris Nineham of Stop the War and Apsana Begum MP. We were represented by two from London (Mark and Linda) and one from the North (Pat).

Despite the ceasefire, the Palestinian genocide continues. Please do attend the national demo if you can. For the SHA, @Mark Howell will be at Hyde Park Corner – suggest north side of Piccadilly at the corner with Park Lane 12.30. Look for the SHA flag.

More than a month after a ceasefire was announced and all living Israeli hostages were released, Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, without signalling any change in   their intent, said Amnesty International today.

The Wrong Prescription – Why Labour Must Rethink Its Approach To Asylum –
Rathi Guhadasan, 18 November 2025

The Socialist Health Association condemns the asylum reforms announced this week by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, which represent a deeply concerning erosion of fundamental health and human rights protections for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

A Betrayal of Health Equity Principles
The proposal to make refugee status temporary, subject to regular review every 30 months, and to extend the pathway to settlement from five to twenty years creates a system of prolonged insecurity that is fundamentally incompatible with public health principles. People living in limbo for two decades will face chronic stress, mental health deterioration, and barriers to accessing preventative healthcare. Refugees and asylum seekers have complex health needs, influenced by experiences in their home country, during their journey or after arrival in the UK. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that they use NHS services disproportionately – in fact, migrants to the UK use fewer resources than their native counterparts.
By removing the statutory duty to provide housing and financial support to asylum seekers, the government is creating conditions that will drive vulnerable people into destitution, homelessness, and exploitative situations. These are precisely the circumstances in which infectious diseases spread, mental health crises deepen, and people present to emergency services in extremis—at far greater cost to the NHS than preventative support would require.

Ignoring the NHS’s Reliance on Refugee and Migrant Workers
The Home Secretary’s rhetoric frames refugees as a burden while conveniently ignoring the fact that many refugees and asylum seekers have been, are, or will become essential NHS workers. Our health service has long depended on the skills, dedication, and compassion of doctors, nurses, care workers, and other health professionals who came to the UK seeking safety.
From doctors fleeing persecution to care workers rebuilding their lives, refugee communities have filled critical workforce gaps and provided culturally sensitive care to diverse patient populations. To treat people seeking asylum as unwelcome whilst simultaneously relying on migrant workers to sustain our health system is hypocritical and short-sighted.

Rights-Based Concerns
These proposals violate the fundamental right to health, which is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the WHO Constitution and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, all of which include the UK as a signatory. Moreover, the NHS constitution states that the NHS “is available to all irrespective of gender, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion, belief, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity or marital or civil partnership status. The service is designed to improve, prevent, diagnose and treat both physical and mental health problems with equal regard. It has a duty to each and every individual that it serves and must respect their human rights. At the same time, it has a wider social duty to promote equality through the services it provides and to pay particular attention to groups or sections of society where improvements in health and life expectancy are not keeping pace with the rest of the population.”

Potential impacts of the proposed asylum reforms include:
 Discrimination in access to care: Removing guaranteed support will create a two-tier
system where asylum seekers’ ability to maintain their health depends on their
circumstances, not their needs.
 Family separation: Removing automatic rights to family reunion tears apart support
networks essential for mental and physical wellbeing, particularly for children and
survivors of trauma.
 Unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors misclassified as adults: As with current so-called “scientific methods” of age assessment, concerns have been raised about proposals to use AI-based Facial Age Estimation. This technology, which cannot take into account ethnic differences and visible aging from trauma, grief, sun exposure or malnutrition, could lead to vulnerable teenagers under 18 years being denied protection, placed in dangerous situations at risk of abuse and even deported.
 Return to unsafe conditions: Forcing people to return to countries deemed “safe” ignores ongoing health infrastructure collapse, persecution of minorities, and the specific vulnerabilities of individuals—especially those with chronic conditions or disabilities.
 Barriers to integration: The 20-year pathway to settlement prevents refugees from fully participating in society, accessing training, and contributing their skills—including in healthcare professions where we desperately need them

A Race to the Bottom
The government’s boast that it is modelling these policies on Denmark—one of Europe’s
strictest systems which has previously called racist and in breach of human rights law—reveals a troubling willingness to abandon compassion in favour of deterrence. This is not evidence- based policymaking; it is an attempt to outflank the far-right by adopting their framing that refugees are a problem to be managed rather than people with rights to be protected.
As health professionals and public health advocates, we know that punitive asylum policies do not deter desperate people fleeing war, persecution, and torture. They simply ensure that people arrive here more traumatised, more vulnerable, and in greater need of healthcare intervention.

We call on the Labour government to:

1. abandon these regressive reforms and return to a rights-based approach to asylum,
2. recognise refugees’ contributions to British society, including to our NHS,
3. invest in properly resourced, humane asylum processing that prioritises health and dignity,
4. consult with health organisations, refugee communities, and frontline workers before implementing any changes to asylum policy, and
5. acknowledge that protecting refugee health rights is not only a moral imperative but a public health necessity

This is not about politics; it is about humanity, evidence, and the kind of society we want to build. A healthy society is one that protects the vulnerable, not one that competes to treat them more harshly.

The SHA stands in solidarity with refugees, asylum seekers, and all those working to defend their rights.