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NHS news review – Nick Clegg calls for the break up of the NHS in 2005

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Nick Clegg states repeatedly that the Liberal Democrats want the NHS to be broken up in a 2005 interview. This was originally an interview in the Independent newspaper. The Independent has since pulled the article since they are very supportive of Neo-Liberal shits.

“We do want to break up the NHS. We don’t want to privatise it, we want to break it up.”  Nick Clegg.

 

Nick Clegg’s demand for the NHS to be broken up

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Opponents said the comments about the NHS, in a 2005 interview in the Independent, showed that Mr Clegg had no understanding of the way the health service works.

In the interview, carried out while Charles Kennedy was leader and two years before Mr Clegg took the job, he said: ‘I think breaking up the NHS is exactly what you do need to do to make it a more responsive service.’

Asked whether he favoured a Canadian or European-style social insurance system, he said: ‘I don’t think anything should be ruled out. I do think they deserve to be looked at because frankly the faults of the British health service compared to others still leave much to be desired.

‘We will have to provide alternatives about what a different NHS looks like.’

Under a social insurance system, members pay into an insurance scheme, either themselves or through an employer, to guarantee their healthcare. It means that those who pay into a more expensive scheme can get better care.

Under the NHS, however, everyone pays into the same scheme through taxes – and is then guaranteed care that is ‘free at the point of use’.

In the interview, Mr Clegg said ‘defending the status quo’ is no longer an option. Instead, he called on his party to ‘let its hair down’, ‘break a long-standing taboo’ and be ‘reckless’ in its thinking.

‘We do want to break up the NHS,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to privatise it, we want to break it up. Should the debate be taboo? Of course not, absolutely not.’

A year earlier, Mr Clegg had contributed to the notorious Orange Book in which those on the right of the party discussed how policies should change under Mr Kennedy’s leadership. The conclusion of the book outlines in more detail the type of insurance scheme he was outlining.

‘The NHS is failing to deliver a health service that meets the needs and expectations of today’s population,’ it said.

John Lister, of the lobby group Health Emergency, said: ‘These comments show Mr Clegg does not understand the NHS. He seems to be ignorant of the fact that social insurance schemes in Europe are far more expensive.’

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: ‘The NHS is one of Britain’s most loved institutions. People will be worried that Nick Clegg wants to “break it up”.’ [!!! That’s Andrew Lansley pretending that the NHS is safe in Tory hands before the election !!!]

 

How the Orange Bookers took over the Lib Dems

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What Britain now has is a blue-orange coalition, with the little-known Orange Book forming the core of current Lib Dem political thinking. To understand how this disreputable arrangement has come about, we need to examine the philosophy laid out in The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism, edited by David Laws (now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury) and Paul Marshall. Particularly interesting are the contributions of the Lib Dems’ present leadership.

Published in 2004, the Orange Book marked the start of the slow decline of progressive values in the Lib Dems and the gradual abandonment of social market values. It also provided the ideological standpoint around which the party’s right wing was able to coalesce and begin their march to power in the Lib Dems. What is remarkable is the failure of former SDP and Labour elements to sound warning bells about the direction the party was taking. Former Labour ministers such as Shirley Williams and Tom McNally should be ashamed of their inaction.

Clegg and his Lib Dem supporters have much in common with David Cameron and his allies in their philosophical approach and with their social liberal solutions to society’s perceived ills. The Orange Book is predicated on an abiding belief in the free market’s ability to address issues such as public healthcare, pensions, environment, globalisation, social and agricultural policy, local government and prisons.

The Lib Dem leadership seems to sit very easily in the Tory-led coalition. This is an arranged marriage between partners of a similar background and belief. Even the Tory-Whig coalition of early 1780s, although its members were from the same class, at least had fundamental political differences. Now we see a Government made up of a single elite that has previously manifested itself as two separate political parties and which is divided more by subtle shades of opinion than any profound ideological difference.
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Conservative election poster 2010

A recent news article about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat(Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

Save our NHS rally: thousands march in health bill protest

Thousands of nurses, midwives, doctors, physiotherapists, and other NHS workers are thought to have attended the rally

The defiant tone was set at the start of Save our NHS rally at Westminster’s central hall when the crowd gave a noisy standing ovation to June Hautot, the veteran NHS campaigner who made headlines last month when she cornered Andrew Lansley as he tried to get into Downing Street for the prime minister’s NHS summit, from which most key medical organisations were excluded.

It was just one of many low points the health secretary has experienced during the health and social care bill’s tortuous and highly charged 14-month progress.

Thousands of nurses, midwives, doctors, physiotherapists, cleaners, porters and other NHS workers were thought to have attended the rally, with marches from the headquarters of the British Medical Association near Euston and St Thomas’s hospital in south London converging on Westminster.

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Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat(Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

 

Apologies that the NHS news review is so late today – I’ve had network problems all day.

 

There’s a rally opposing the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS bill today at 6pm. There are many statements from union leaders. The BMA’s Consultants Committee intend to vote on a motion of no confidence in Andrew Lansley.

Awaiting a decision in the risk register hearing.The arguments proposed.

BMA: patient care compromised as consultants forced to fight ‘belligerent’ Government

 

Dr Porter, a consultant obstetric anaesthetist at the University Hospital, Coventry, said: “The tragedy is that doctors’ time and effort is being increasingly diverted away from seeking to improve patient care.”

Lauching a broadside at ministers’ plans to reform the NHS and overhaul doctors’ pensions, he said: “The Government has opened battle with doctors.”

He continued: “Consultants have been pushed into conflict by a belligerent and obstinate government, when we would far rather be planning improvements in clinical services.”

The Health and Social Care Bill was opposed, he claimed, by “almost every part of society”, while the Government had done “nothing to address” widely-held concerns.

He described proposed changes to doctors’ pensions, that are likely to result in industrial action, as a “betrayal” of the “social compact” between medics and their employers.

While Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, has repeatedly accused doctors and nurses of opposing the Bill because the Government wanted them to pay more for their pensions, Dr Porter said these were “quite separate” issues that had been “wrongly linked”.

“On both these matters we stand ready to discuss them with the Government but we find that the door to talks has been slammed in our face,” he said.

Simon Burns, the Health Minister, accused the BMA of “scaremongering from the sidelines” while doctors got on with the job at hand.

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Letwin on NHS: It is privatisation


David Cameron and Andrew Lansley are desperate to avoid the suggestion that they are privatising the NHS.

But it seems that cabinet minister Oliver Letwin didn’t get the memo.

He said last week that putting private companies in charge of schools and hospitals would soon “become not a matter of political debate but straightforward and obvious as a way of conducting business in this country”.

Letwin has boasted about the Tory threat to the NHS before. He reportedly said in 2004 that the NHS “will not exist” within five years of a Tory government.

 

 

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Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat(Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

In today’s NHS news review:

  • The Information Rights Tribunal to decide whether the risk register needs to be published as directed by the Information Commissioner continues.
  • Crap IT firm CSC gets another £1billion of NHS business
  • Labour MP Jonathan Reynolds on the NHS

 NHS reforms risk assessments ‘open to speculation’ if published

Department of Health permanent secretary Una O’Brien says contents of documents ‘might be interpreted and misrepresented’

The publication of documents outlining the risks relating to the government’s health changes could lead to a “distorted and wildly speculative interpretation of risk”, according to the permanent secretary of the Department of Health.

Una O’Brien also warned that publishing the documents would have a “chilling effect” on the way civil servants tasked with outlining the potential pitfalls of a policy commit their views to paper, as the government fights to keep secret the contents of its risk assessments of the government’s shakeup of the NHS.

O’Brien was giving evidence to the information rights tribunal as the government seeks to overturn a November ruling by the information commissioner, Christopher Graham, who ordered the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, to release his department’s risk assessment of the potential dangers of his radical shakeup.

It follows two separate freedom of information (FoI) requests lodged more than a year ago for the strategic risk register (February 2011) and the transition programme risk register (November 2010) to be made public.

Graham said in his ruling that disclosure of the two documents would significantly aid public understanding of risks related to the proposed changes and it would also inform participation in the debate about the reorganisation.

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John Healey: Hidden risks that lie at the heart of huge NHS reforms

TODAY, I’ll be giving evidence in court in London and calling on the Government to release their risk assessment of the huge changes they want to make to our NHS.

It was back in 2010 as Labour’s shadow health secretary that I first asked the Department of Health to release this information, the “transition risk register” relating to the controversial Health and Social Care Bill.

A risk register contains an objective list of the risks associated with the implementation of a programme or policy, confirming and giving reassurance that the Department has considered fully what might go wrong and taken steps to ensure the risks are minimised or managed.

Risk has been at the heart of concern about the NHS reforms from the outset. Lack of evidence and confidence about how well the Government was prepared to deal with the risks was a major cause of growing professional, public and Parliamentary alarm at the plans throughout last year.

When the Government refused my FoI request, I referred it to the Information Commissioner. A year later, the Information Commissioner came to the legal judgment that the risk register – which he has had the benefit of seeing – must be released.

He said there was “very strong public interest in disclosure of the information, given the significant change to the structure of the health service the government’s policies on the modernisation will bring”. And he said it would “aid public understanding and debate”.

But the Health Secretary still refuses. It begs the question, just what is Andrew Lansley trying to hide?

David Cameron promised “no top-down reorganisation of the NHS” before the election; now he is forcing through the biggest reorganisation in NHS history – at the same time the health service is facing the biggest financial squeeze since the 1950s.

But this isn’t a matter of whether you are for or against the reforms.

It’s about people’s right to know the Government’s own assessment of the nature and scale of the risks they are running with the quality, safety and efficiency of our NHS. They want to know the Government are doing everything they can to reduce risks to patients and services.

But the Government haven’t reassured us of that yet – that’s one of the reasons why concern and criticism is still growing from the public, patients, health professionals and Parliament.

Ministers are dismissive. They’re out of touch. They simply can’t see what the NHS means to people, how much it matters.

We all need the NHS. We trust it when we are most fearful. We utterly depend on it when we are most vulnerable.

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IT firm behind ‘unworkable’ NHS database keeps IT deal

Ministers have agreed to give the American company responsible for the “unworkable” NHS database almost £1 billion in health contracts

 Computer Sciences Corporation, an American IT firm, previously had a £1.9 billion contract for the national NHS system which was scrapped by Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, last year.

The firm is understood to have threatened legal action against the Government and is now thought to have agreed to continue with up to £900 million of NHS work in return for dropping any legal action.

It will run computer systems for the NHS across the north, midlands and eastern England under the deal which is expected to be agreed in the coming days.

Ministers are expected to herald the “compromise deal” as a success which will save the taxpayer about £1 billion. However, it underlines the difficulties faced by the Coalition in extricating itself from previous contracts agreed by the last Government.

It will also add to growing allegations that despite the high-profile announcement that the beleaguered national NHS database is being scrapped – it is simply being replaced by a series of similar regional systems which will perform the same function.

The NHS database attracted widespread criticism following a series of damning official reports. Last year, the House of Commons Public Accounts committee described the programme as “unworkable”.

Last May, the National Audit Office criticised the project for being poor value for money, patchy and long overdue.

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NHS, e-petitions and broken promises

[Jonathan Reynolds is MP for Stalybridge and Hyde and is parliamentary private secretary to Ed Miliband]

David Cameron is failing to listen not only to healthcare professionals but to tens of thousands of people who want the health bill dropped, writes one Labour MP

In the run-up to the last general election, David Cameron promised that Parliament would debate and vote on any issue if it had the backing of more than 100,000 people.

But that promise was broken in February – when I was refused parliamentary time to debate the future of the government’s Health and Social Care Bill.

An e-petition – calling on the government to drop the controversial bill – was started by respected health professional Kailash Chand OBE, who lives in the Stalybridge and Hyde constituency.

When I stood before Backbench Business Committee, the e-petition had already been signed by more than 162,000 people.

Yet despite widespread backing – including members of the Labour Party, the Green Party, the SDLP, the DUP and the Liberal Democrats – the application for the debate was refused.

In the 24 hours following the application people continued to sign the petition at a rate of one a minute. Now the total stands at 169,114 – and it is continuing to rise.

David Cameron made his promise to devote parliamentary time to any issue that was backed by 100,000 people because he wanted to show that he would listen; he wanted to show that he was in touch.

But his determination to railroad through the Health and Social Care Bill shows that he will not listen – not to the Royal Colleges, not to the patients, not to the healthcare unions and not to the tens of thousands of people who have signed the petition.

Of course David Cameron made another important promise in the run-up to the general election – he promised that there would be no more top-down reorganisation of the NHS.

Despite his reassuring words, the Health and Social Care Bill marks the biggest reorganisation of the NHS since its launch in 1948.

This bill is a reckless gamble with the NHS that could lead to widespread variation in the treatments that will be available in different parts of the country.

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Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat(Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

I’ll do a proper NHS news review later – I have to go out and do some nonsense. Just one article featured for now.

 We have two weeks to save the NHS, say leading academics

Literary festival hears rallying cry against ‘Bill that will kill the health service’

 Leading health academics Colin Leys and Allyson Pollock yesterday issued a rallying call to everyone who wants to save the NHS. This is, they both said, a crucial fortnight. With the Liberal Democrat conference looming, which they both saw as a last-chance opportunity to stop the Lansley reforms, they largely ignored their brief from the Bath Festival of Literature – to talk about the long-term future of the service at an Independent Voices debate entitled “Is the NHS sacred?” 

“This Bill will destroy the NHS,” said Ms Pollock, London University professor of Health Policy and Health Services Research. “If you care for the future, you need to focus now on stopping the Bill. This is a terrifying, Big-Bang moment, because Lansley and his team are moving us to a mixed-financing system similar to that in the US.”

“It will be the end of free care for all,” said Mr Leys, emeritus professor of political science at Goldsmiths’ College. The future he foresaw would be one in which “community care will contract and decline, everyone who can afford to will go private and all we’ll be left with is a much-reduced service for the poor”.

<original posting snipped >

 

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

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