Hospital Closure Clause: an ambitious plan

Over the last week 38 Degrees members have been voting to decide our next move on the campaign to protect our hospitals. Together we’ve decided to throw everything at stopping the hospital closure clause – to keep our hospitals safe.

The hospital closure clause is not law yet. It returns to the House of Lords on 7th May. It’s going to be difficult to persuade enough Lords to support it. Especially because peers aren’t elected by voters, so our usual people-powered tactics don’t work.

But, we’ve got an ambitious plan. Baroness Finlay, an influential doctor and crossbench peer has agreed to lead the charge in the House of Lords. She’s putting forward changes to the law that make sure that decisions about closing hospitals will only be made in the best interest of patients. Now we need to get enough Lords to support the amendment.

So here’s the plan:
– We deliver a briefing backed by legal heavyweights to every single member of the House of Lords making the case for them to support the amendment
– We put on expert face-to-face briefings to persuade Lords to back Baroness Finlay’s amendment
– Lots of 38 Degrees members have personal relationships with members of the House of Lords. We ask those of us who do know members of the House of Lords to get in touch with them and ask them to support the Finlay amendment
– The staff team will also get in touch with Lords we’ve worked with before to do one-on-one briefings

But to do this, we need the money to make it possible. Can you help by chipping in a few pounds to make this plan a reality? Click here to make a secure donation now.

The money you donate will go towards:
– producing a glossy, informative and persuasive briefing paper which the office team will send to every single member of the House of Lords
– putting on a face-to-face briefing, getting top lawyers and hospital campaigners along to persuade sceptical Lords to back the amendment

38 Degrees is funded by small donations by hundreds of thousands of us. Sometimes 38 Degrees members come together to pay for tactics like this to give us our best chance of winning, which otherwise we couldn’t afford.

We’ve got less than a month to convince as many Lords as possible to back an amendment which does as much as possible to keep our hospitals free from danger. So, together let’s roll up our sleeves and get stuck in.

Do you have any thoughts? Leave your comments below.