Members of Unison from sterile services and medical secretaries took part together in a brief protest tonight before going in to the UHL's public meeting to ask questions about the threats to their jobs.

I'm sitting at the back of the audience for the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust annual public meeting. Martin Hindle has given an introduction and Angus Maitland is presenting a review of the UHL's last twelve months.

I'm waiting to see if he talks about the decision to contract with Capita for our payroll (which has been a complete disaster seeing thousands of staff wrongly paid) or to invite private health company Birkdale to operate on our patients at Glenfield. Birkdale's contract was suspended after orthopaedic consultants raised concerns about the quality of the operations carried out.

Unison's Health Service Group Executive AGM is over, and we're heading to Trowbridge for the Folk Festival and the start of our holiday.

I don't think I can write a full report of the meeting on my BlackBerry whilst driving down the M6 (I know, I know, I'm a diletante) but I will just comment on the most important debate: that on the question of re-opening year two of the three-year pay deal.

There was a unanimous view that the re-opener clause will almost certainly need to be triggered. There was little or no support for the idea of Unison trying to re-negotiate the first year increase.

Top of the list for this afternoon's business - prioritised by delegates at the conference - is motion 63 on the union's relationship with the Labour Party.

The motion calls for a review of the union's political funds, and asks "what do we get for our money"?

The NEC have submitted an amendment to the motion. Although the speeches and the leaflets they have put out argue that we don't need a review because we had one five years ago, their amendment accepts the idea of a review whilst gutting it of any potential impact. The NEC aren't actually speaking against the motion, but by putting up an amendment they are trying to avoid the embarrassment of losing a vote on this subject.

I received the following email the other days. Despite being an elected member of UNISON's Health SGE I didn't receive it from the national office directly, but via a member in another region who forwarded it on to the excellent and useful healthactivists email list.

The email raises a couple of questions. Firstly the fact that the email, the meeting it refers to, and the draft statement presented to that meeting in UNISON's name all seems to have gone on without any oversight or control by the elected lay leadership of the union. I think members of the union will quite reasonably ask why the SGE weren't in control of this process of negotiations with the other NHS unions.

Delegates vote to agree support for motion 30 demonstrating our pride in the NHS at its 60th birthday.

The highlight of the second day of UNISON conference has undoubtedly been the NHS debate. There was an excellent fringe meeting at lunchtime organised by the cross-union activist bulletin health worker. Several of the newly-elected members of the health SGE were there, and they joined in an excellent discussion about learning the lessons from the pay ballot. There was a determined mood to the meeting and positive suggestions for rebuilding our relationships with other NHS unions in support of efforts to get the pay deal re-opened, in line with Dave Prentis' speech and his comments in this morning's papers.

Marsha has already blogged on the excellent Public Service Not Private Profit fringe meeting, and General Secretary Dave Prentis' speech. So I won't repeat her comments.

Currently Francis Prideaux from St Mary's Paddington is moving an excellent amendment to the NEC's motion on the economy. Francis.makes the excellent point that the government is not in favour of privatising everything. As the Northern Rock debacle showed, while they are privatising profits they are determined to nationalise the costs and the losses. Francis' amendment points out that the Labour conference already has agreed policies with the support of Unison which would turn that agenda on its head. The question, of course, is what do we do to get those policies implemented.