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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.

 

David Cameron talked nonsense to Tory party loyalists about destroying the NHS. I don’t think that they anticipated the overwhelming and almost universal opposition to their plans.

David Cameron has said he does not care about “taking a hit” on the government’s radical shake-up of the NHS in England, vowing there was no going back on the reforms.

I expect that the Conservatives and the ‘Liberal-Democrat’ Conservatives will take a hit over their destruction of the NHS. The public will side with health workers almost universally opposed to their viscious attack against lying politician scum with hidden vested interests.

NHS fairness tsar urged to quit by doctors over ‘conflict of interest’ following £799,000 payment for U.S. private health giant

The head of the NHS regulator that is meant to ensure fairness when private-sector firms bid for public contracts is also the chairman of a huge company whose Health Service business is worth £80 million a year – and set to increase massively.

As the chairman of the NHS Co-operation and Competition Panel (CCP), Lord Carter of Coles is paid £57,000 for two days’ work each week. But his other role, as chairman of the UK branch of the American healthcare firm McKesson, is more generously rewarded. Last year it paid him £799,000.

Even this is not the end of Lord Carter’s private healthcare interests. He is chairman of the Bermuda-registered Primary Group Ltd, a private-equity investment company that owns big slices of other healthcare firms.

And he is an adviser to Warburg Pincus International Ltd, another investment fund with large health interests. His income from these sources is not publicly disclosed.

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Radiologists join call for NHS reforms to be axed

 

The chorus of opposition to the coalition’s NHS reforms has got louder, with the Royal College of Radiologists joining a growing list of medical bodies denouncing the health and social care bill.

The professional body for experts in diagnostic imaging of disease and injury, which includes cancer specialists, called on ministers to withdraw their plans for a radical shake-up of the NHS in England following a survey of its 8,800 membership.

The college said on Friday that a substantial majority – 76% of the 37% who voted – called for the bill to be abandoned rather than continue to press for amendments. Its announcement came a day after the British Medical Association warned that the government’s reform programme would cause irreparable damage to the relationships between doctors and patients and would irreversibly harm the NHS.

Jane Barrett, president of the Royal College of Radiologists, said: “The RCR has always had grave concerns about many aspects of the bill. We have sought, and, with others, attained many changes to the draft legislation. Despite those amendments, our concerns remain and we feel this move of position is necessary.”

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NHS Risk Register Probe By Information Commissioner To Begin

 

A Government appeal will be heard on Monday against a ruling which says it must publish a risk assessment of its controversial NHS reforms.

In November, the Information Commissioner concluded there was a “very strong public interest” in disclosing the risk register, which details the potential impact of the Health and Social Care Bill.

The Department of Health had earlier refused a freedom of information request to publish the register, saying there is a stronger public interest in withholding the register from public scrutiny than in publishing it.

The department told the commissioner it must be able to use the register without fear the information will be put in the public domain “in an unmanaged way” while its policy continues to be developed.

The commissioner rejected those arguments and ordered the register be published.

On Monday, the Information Rights Tribunal will hear the Government’s appeal against the commissioner’s decision.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has said it would be “completely misleading” to publish the register, which was put together before changes were made to the Bill and had been intended as an “internal mechanism”.

He said that, to be effective, a risk register requires all those involved to be frank and open about potential risk.

Labour argues that full disclosure is needed and local risk registers already show the scale of damage that could be done to the NHS by the Bill.

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The NHS Support Federation on the risk register

 

Damaging assessment

There are some possible indications for why Mr Lansley is so reluctant to publish the reports, as some leaked elements of the risk register are said to paint a damning picture of the affect his reforms will have on the health service. The Green Benches blog by Dr Eoin Clarke carries segments which are said to have come from the risk register, and his assessment is

‘The chief warning in the report is that Lansley’s reforms will spark a surge in health care costs and that the NHS will become unaffordable as private profiteers siphon off money for their own benefit. The report specifically warns that GPs have no experience or skills to manage costs effectively.’

The issue of costs is also raised in the NHS London’s Risk Assessment, which was published on its website, and warned that the reforms could lead to the financial ‘failure’ of some NHS organisations, worse care for patients, and threats to maternity services, children’s safety and public health.

Interestingly, these are the kinds of regional assessments which were sent to the Department of Health to make up Strategic Risk Register, which the department is unwilling to publish. Certainly, if that report came to similar conclusions, Andrew Lansley’s reluctance would be understandable.

NHS reforms live blog – Monday 5 March

Live coverage as the Department of Health appeals against a ruling by the information commissioner that it must publish the risk register for the controversial health and social care bill

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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.

Hackney CCG has followed Tower Hamlets CCG in opposing the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill.

City and Hackney’s CCG announcement comes just days after the shock move by Tower Hamlets CCG, which is led by GP Dr Sam Everington – who was once a vocal supporter of the government’s plans – to call for the bill’s withdrawal.

… In a letter written by the City and Hackney CCG today (Thursday), the group’s chairwoman Dr Clare Highton and chairman Dr Haren Patel, told David Cameron: “Like most NHS staff, we are afraid the NHS will be damaged beyond recognition in a few years if the Bill is passed.”

The letter asks Mr Cameron to “withdraw” the bill, because the CCG is already undergoing “huge disruption and a very bureaucratic process” as a result.

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Liberal-Democrat activists are continuing in their efforts to have an emergency motion calling for the NHS bill to be “withdrawn or defeated”.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17218403

Lib Dem activists will press for a vote on axing the NHS bill at next week’s spring conference – despite Nick Clegg’s efforts to reassure his party.

The deputy PM put forward changes on Tuesday which he said should allow the bill to proceed and reassure Lib Dems.

But activists will press for a motion urging the “deeply flawed” bill to be “withdrawn or defeated”.

Labour’s Andy Burnham said Lib Dems were “right to challenge the leadership of their party” on the issue.

But sources close to Mr Clegg told the BBC they believed the motion would be defeated, if selected for debate, once activists see the level of support for the amended bill among Lib Dem MPs and peers.

The motion says the Health and Social Care Bill for England, cannot be made “fit for purpose” by further amendments.

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Yesterday’s statement by the BMA’s GPs committee.
NHS reform bill ‘complex, incoherent and not fit for purpose’, say doctors

BMA letter opposing NHS reforms

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NHS news review: Letter from BMA’s GPs committee to all English GPs

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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.

 

The British Medical Association’s general practitioners committee has agreed a motion opposing the ConDem government’s Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill. The resolution represents a hardening of the BMA’s opposition to the bill. The letter can be read here. Here is the resolution that was passed.

“That the BMA’s general practitioners committee, which represents all GPs in the UK:

• Formally reaffirms its opposition to the NHS health and social care bill

• Believes that if passed the bill will be irreversibly damaging to the NHS as a public service, converting it into a competitive marketplace that will widen health inequalities and be detrimental to patient care

• Believes the bill will compromise the role of GPs, and could cause irreparable damage to the relationship between GPs and their patients.

• Believes the bill to be complex, incoherent and not fit for purpose, and almost impossible to implement successfully, given widespread opposition across the NHS workforce.

• Believes that passing the bill will be an irresponsible waste of taxpayers’ money, which will be spent on unnecessary reorganisation rather than on patient care, as well as increasing the running costs of the NHS from the processes of competition, and transaction costs

• Believes that GPs’ participation in CCGs does not equate to support for the bill, but that GPs are there to defend their patients’ interests and mitigate the adverse impact of the bill

• Supports clinically led commissioning believing this will lead to improvements in patient care in the NHS, and believes this can be more effectively achieved within existing legislation

• Calls upon the coalition government to withdraw the bill and instead enter into productive dialogue with the BMA to agree a way forward for clinically-led commissioning.

 

 

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Cabinet colleagues on board with NHS shakeup, insists Andrew Lansley

Health secretary says Liberal Democrats instrumental in making reforms ‘stronger’

 

The Liberal Democrats were fundamental in helping to make the controversial NHS reforms “stronger”, embattled health secretary Andrew Lansley has said.

Lansley insisted his cabinet colleagues were on board with the massive shakeup – despite claims that three fellow Tories had deep concerns about the plans – and praised the input of his party’s coalition partners.

“If there had been a Conservative government, we would have started out in a different place,” he told BBC2’s Newsnight. “The bill is better as a result of the coalition coming together to shape it.”

He admitted he had always known there would be uproar over the bill, noting that all previous health secretaries who had attempted to push through changes had faced the same response.

“There’s always noise,” he said. “The NHS matters so people make a lot of passionate remarks about it. Ken Clarke, who is a fabulous communicator, far better than I am, he tried reform in the early 1990s and the BMA [British Medical Association] said that it was the end of the NHS as we know it.

“There is no way of undertaking major reform imagining that you’re not going to be misrepresented and distorted … We’ve reached the stage where quite a lot of the disinformation out there is a problem, because people are saying things that are literally not true.”

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Living on borrowed time? The changing frontiers of the NHS debate

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What do you think those determined to save the NHS can do at this stage?

The important thing is not to let up. Everyone should just intensify what they are already doing. The time between now and the end of the parliamentary session is critical. People are tired, but so are the government. They are badly rattled. A good illustration of this was the ill-judged so-called summit with representatives of the medical professions called by Cameron on 20 February, to which only representatives of the few who support the bill were invited. This was so obvious that as a public relations exercise it proved seriously counter-productive. Government spokespeople were left lamely claiming that there would be other summits to which (they implied) those who had been excluded would be invited. The more people show that their opposition is deep and will be long-lasting, the more rattled the government will become.

The charade of the report stage in the Lords, which is about to begin, needs to be exposed. The media are already describing the new amendments as important when they are not. Pressure needs to be kept on the media, and not least the BBC, to show some objectivity and balance their coverage by inviting genuine expert critics of the bill to take part in their panel discussions of it.

It is important to focus on the Lib Dems. Lansley’s ham-fistedness has attracted most of the flak but the Lib Dem MPs and peers are providing him with cover by going through the motions of obtaining ‘concessions’ while in reality enabling the bill to be passed. The Lib Dem President, Tim Farron, has already blinked, calling for the competition chapter of the bill to be removed, while acknowledging that this may not go far enough for Lib Dem activists (it won’t). Delegates to the Lib Dem conference, and Lib Dem councillors standing in the forthcoming local elections, need to be heavily lobbied. Everyone should also write a letter to as many Lib Dem MPs and peers as they can, and get others to do the same.

The bill wasn’t in the Conservatives’ election manifesto, let alone in the Lib Dems’, nor was it in the coalition agreement. It has no electoral mandate. It is a private sector ramp, masterminded by McKinsey.  Lib Dems must be left under no illusions. They need to understand that if they allow the Conservatives’ bill to become law they are morally and electorally finished.

 

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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.

Pulse reported yesterday that Tower Hamlets CCG (Care Commissioning Group) have called on the government to drop the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill. This huge news story has received very little attention by the corporate press.  From the Guardian’s NHS reforms live blog.

Breaking news – and it’s another plea for the government to drop the health and social care bill altogether, not simply amend it further. Tower Hamlets clinical commissioning group in east London has become the first CCG to ask for the legislation to be withdrawn.

While a growing list of medical organisations has already adopted the same position, including the BMA and various medical royal colleges, this CCG’s action is significant because David Cameron has sought to portray the spread of CCGs across England as evidence of GPs’ enthusiasm for the NHS shake-up.

Plus, this particular vote of no-confidence has been authored by no less than Dr Sam Everington, a widely respected GP who used to advise Andrew Lansley, and whose Bromley-by-Bow surgery in Tower Hamlets hosted the health secretary’s first speech soon after the 2010 general election.

Pulse, the magazine and website for GPs, has an exclusive story that reports that Everington, the chair of the NHS Tower Hamlets Clinical Commisisoning Group, has written to the prime minister asking for the bill to be scrapped because his “rolling restructuring of the NHS compromises our ability to focus on what really counts”. Efforts to further improve patient care through clinically-led commissioning – a key element of the bill – could still be made “without the bureaucracy generated by the bill”, Everington adds.

As Pulse reports: “The moves marks the first time a CCG has publicly called for the bill to be withdrawn and comes after Pulse revealed last month [that] some commissioning leaders were concerned that the government had ‘lost the narrative’ on the reforms.”

The letter states: “We support a strong role for clinical involvement in commissioning decisions that lead to better health outcomes for our patients. We do this already in Tower Hamlets. An Act of Parliament is not needed to make this happen.”

In what Pulse deputy editor Steve Nowottny calls “a big blow to the government”, Everington goes on to say that his CCG does “share the concerns” about “the long-term implications of the bill made by our professional representative organisations, the Royal College of GPs and the British Medical Association”. As both those bodies are now firmly in the “drop the bill” camp, his deliberate association with them makes Everington’s letter even more embarrassing for ministers and Number 10.

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Lib-Dem Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Shirley Williams wrote a joint letter yesterday to Liberal Democrat parlimentarians. They’re demanding further changes to the Destroy the NHS Bill having been scared by Lib-Dem activist demands. I’m bored with this – read about it here.

 

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