destroy the NHS bill

NHS news review

Spread the love

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 for the delay – huge connectivity problems. (Hi reader Rich;)

Con-Dems drag heels on NHS risk

 

 MPs launched a fresh attack on the government on Wednesday for dragging its heels over publication of the potential risks of NHS reforms almost a week after a legal ruling ordered it to do so.

An information rights tribunal ordered the government to publish the national risk register last Friday.

Doing so would make public the known consequences for NHS patients and services if the Health and Social Care Bill is to become law.

Last week’s ruling was the second demanding that the register be published.

The Information Commissioner found in favour of its publication in November 2010.

But as the Health Bill nears its final stage the government is still refusing to publish the register.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “We are still awaiting the detailed reasoning behind this decision.

“Once we have been able to examine the judgement we will work with colleagues across government and decide next steps.”

Labour MPs believe the government is intentionally dragging its feet on publishing the register to ensure the Bill goes through before its full implications are clear.

…

NHS – Last Chance?

On Monday afternoon, the House of Lords starts the final voting on the NHS changes. An influential crossbench Lord, Lord David Owen, has agreed to deliver the Save Our NHS petition. He will take it into the House of Lords chamber, just before the debate starts.

The petition bears the names of over half a million of us. It speaks of our fears for the future of our NHS: services broken up, creeping privatisation, money diverted from patient care. These are the kinds of risks which could be in the government’s risk report. But the government still won’t publish that report, despite legal orders to do so.

During Monday’s debate, Lord Owen will call a vote blocking the NHS changes until the risk report is published. Our petition will remind Lords that the public care about these risks to the future of our health service. It could persuade some wavering Lords to vote the right way.

It’s quite a long shot, to be honest. The government seems determined to ignore everyone’s concerns and force things through. But incredible things can happen even this late in the day – it’s definitely worth a try.

There’s already 500,000 names on the petition. But the bigger it is, the more powerful our message to the Lords on Monday when the petition is delivered. So please can you sign the petition and forward it to your friends, family and colleagues too.

…

 

100 NHS voices: what happens if the NHS bill passes?

Even professionals find the health and social care bill confusing. Below, as an introduction to this special series of interviews, Denis Campbell, the Guardian’s health correspondent, explains what will happen if it goes through

• Explore what 100 people who work in or with the NHS think of the reforms in our interactive

• Tell us how concerned you are about the reforms and what the NHS means to you

…

 

Med students demand halt to NHS attacks

 Nearly 2,000 medical students called on the PM on Thursday to ditch the coalition’s hated attack on the NHS that could leave them without jobs.

An open letter signed by thousands of trainee doctors was handed in to No 10 and expressed concern what state the NHS will be in when they qualify if Health and Social Care Bill is passed next week.

The four students who wrote it – Vita Sinclair, Anya Gopfert, Joy Clarke and Cameron Stocks – asked David Cameron not to “gamble with our shared right to comprehensive health care” and told him it is “not too late to drop the Bill.”

Ms Sinclair said: “The health Bill is dangerous because it is so complicated that people struggle to understand what is happening to their NHS.

“If the Bill is passed we will see gradual changes leaving vulnerable populations like the homeless or simply those with a complicated medical history at high risk of being treated unfairly or not treated at all.”

 

NHS reforms: seven in 10 hospital doctors reject bill

 

Royal College of Physicians poll shows widespread opposition to shakeup, with abundant fears about privatisation of services

Britain’s hospital doctors want the coalition’s controversial NHS shakeup to be scrapped, with many fearing it will lead to health services being privatised, a poll has revealed.

Almost seven in 10 members of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), which represents hospital doctors, want the health and social care bill withdrawn.

The findings of the RCP’s poll of its members’ views on the bill are another blow to ministers’ efforts to convince doctors their plans are right, and are a significant addition to the medical community’s almost unanimous opposition to it.

…

How the Orange Bookers took over the Lib Dems

…
What Britain now has is a blue-orange coalition, with the little-knownOrange 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.
…

 

Continue ReadingNHS news review

NHS news review

Spread the love

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.

 

  • National No Smoking Day today.
  • Bids to abolish the  Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill with the support of a handful of Lib-Dem MPs fails.
  • Dr Kailash Chand OBE – who started the epetition – suggests that the BMA should ballot on strike action to oppose the Destroy the NHS Bill

 

Commons revolt against NHS reforms defeated

Government survives two votes of no confidence in health and social care bill but faces at least two further major challenges

 

Two votes of no confidence in the government’s NHS reforms have been comfortably defeated but other developments mean that ministers face at least two further major challenges to the legislation in the final week before the bill is due to be passed.

MPs voted twice on Tuesday on motions to drop the health and social care bill after Labour held a three-hour opposition day debate inspired by a public e-petition signed by more than 174,000 people calling for the government to abandon the legislation.

The first vote was on a Liberal Democrat motion calling for the bill to be dropped in its current form and urging health professionals and critics to work with the coalition government on further reform of the NHS. Despite earlier hopes of a bigger cross-party uprising, the motion was defeated by 260 votes to 314 in support of the government – a majority of 54, compared with the government’s overall majority of 84. A second vote on a simpler motion by Labour to simply drop the bill was defeated by 258 to 314.

Ministers are reported to want the bill passed into law on 20 March, a day before the budget. Some critics of the bill have vowed to keep fighting until then.

…

The BMA is picking the wrong fight [registration needed to view article]

 

…

As the health bill gains more and more momentum in Parliament, we need to put our energy into the big issue rather than letting political pressure divide us. In any event, the question of ‘pensions or politics’ is not an either/or problem – we can still go back to the table to renegotiate pensions without losing credibility on the bigger picture of health reform.

I intend to stand for BMA Council again this year so I can contribute to this debate. I don’t want the medical profession to become fragmented under pressure, and we need to protect ourselves from those on the outside with a vested interest.

But I can’t do it by myself. The union needs the support of all its members during the hard times ahead.

Why would the BMA not ballot its members for industrial action to save the NHS? If the union knows we would disrupt our work to protect our finances, it must also show the public that we would be willing to do the same to save the NHS.

 

How the Orange Bookers took over the Lib Dems

…
What Britain now has is a blue-orange coalition, with the little-knownOrange 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.
…

Continue ReadingNHS news review

NHS news review

Spread the love

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.

In today’s news:

  • Labour uses its opposition day debate to discuss the NHS. The debate is framed in terms of the epetition which was not to be discussed by parliament despite receiving over 170 thousand signatures. There is a rebel amendment by 5 Lib-Dem MPs which calls for changes according to the Coalition Agreement. I thought that there was no mention of NHS reforms in the Coalition Agreement.
  • Andrew Lansley argues that the NHS would have collapsed without his ‘reforms’. I find his argument rather strange. The NHS was performing well. The argument that doing nothing is not an option does not mean that a huge top-down restructuring – exactly as promised otherwise – combined with huge cuts is necesssary. It is certainly clear to me that Lansley, Cameron, Clegg & Co are intent on destroying the NHS.
  • A second hospital trust is looking to be privately managed.
  • GPs ask for talks with government on implementing reforms while maintaining their opposition.

NHS bill: Lords and MPs debating healthcare shake-up

 

Controversial plans to overhaul the way the NHS is run in England are again being debated in the Lords, as Labour says the bill can still be stopped.

Peers are examining the Health and Social Care Bill and there will be a Labour-led NHS debate in the Commons.

Labour says it will support a motion by rebel Lib Dem MPs calling for the bill to be dropped.

But health minister Simon Burns told the BBC he was “very confident” it would become law by the spring.

The legislation is now coming to the end of its report stage in the Lords and is expected to become law within weeks.

While peers debate the legislation, MPs will be asked to vote on Labour’s motion: “That this House: notes the e-petition signed by 170,000 people calling on the government to drop the health and social care bill; and declines to support the bill in its current form.”

 

 

Rebel amendment

Five Lib Dem backbenchers, Andrew George, John Pugh, Adrian Sanders, Greg Mulholland and David Ward have put forward their own amendment which “declines to support the Bill in its current form” and calls for an “urgent summit” of government, health and patients’ groups to plan reforms “based on the coalition agreement”.

Labour sources have told the BBC the party will back the amendment, to try to bolster Lib Dem opposition and build a cross-party alliance to defeat the Bill, ahead of its final reading in the Commons next week.

…

 

Related: NHS reforms: Lib Dem divisions resurface as bill returns to parliament

NHS will collapse without reforms, Andrew Lansley warns

Health secretary says he doesn’t care about ‘attacks’ by health professionals, the NHS must change to avert crisis

Andrew Lansley has mounted a defiant defence of his unpopular NHS reforms, claiming that the changes will stop the service from collapsing.

In a strongly worded article in the British Journal of Nursing (BJN), the health secretary lambasts Labour’s “hypocritical” opposition to his plans to extend competition in the NHS and shrugs off the sometimes vitriolic criticism he inspires.

“Some people say we should not have embarked on this programme of NHS reform. To those people who doubt what we are doing I would say, because of the pressures we are facing, we cannot afford not to reform the NHS. To take the approach advocated by Labour of simply sitting on our hands would be storing up a crisis for the future”, Lansley writes.

…

 

Second NHS trust faces privatisation

 

 Shadows of privateers circling the NHS grew darker today when a health trust in Warwickshire said it was open to a takeover.

George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton said it’s in talks with a clutch of potential partners, including Serco and Circle, and tender documents may be published next month.

In February, Hinchingbrooke Health Care Trust in Cambridgeshire became the first all-purpose general hospital to be managed by a private company when Circle took control.

Former Labour health minister Mike O’Brien (pictured), who lost his local Warwickshire seat in 2010, has accused the government of forcing the hospital board into the merger.

He told the Coventry Telegraph that the idea should be dropped, adding: “I think this is about the values of the NHS. It is the National Health Service, not the National Health Business.”

…

 

 

NHS bill: GPs offer to help with health changes

 

The Royal College of GPs has indicated it is willing to work again with the government on implementing changes to the NHS in England, it has emerged.

The body had been omitted from talks since declaring its opposition to the Health and Social Care Bill last month.

Its head, Clare Gerada, said members had not changed opinion but were willing to help “find a way forward”.

She said the royal college still wanted the bill withdrawn but it was time to “stop polarising” the debate.

…

 

 

How the Orange Bookers took over the Lib Dems

…
What Britain now has is a blue-orange coalition, with the little-knownOrange 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.
…

 

Continue ReadingNHS news review

NHS news review

Spread the love

Conservative election poster 2010

Recent events in the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat (Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

 

Apart from the SNP’s Sturgeon claiming that the only way to protect the Scottish health service is through independence, all the news is about the vote at the Liberal-Democrat Spring conference.

Liberal-Democrats resisted appeals from Nick Clegg and Shirley Williams to support the Destroy the NHS / Health and Social Care Bill.

 

How the Orange Bookers took over the Lib Dems

…
What Britain now has is a blue-orange coalition, with the little-knownOrange 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.
…

Continue ReadingNHS news review

NHS news review: Lib-Dem Neo-Con Conference

Spread the love

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 Guardian’s Politics Live Blog has the latest on Lib-Dem support for destroying the NHS. They’ve voted to neither support nor oppose it.

Yesterday’s Guardian Politics blog was correct in identifying that the Lib-Dem debate on health had been framed well as Shirley Williams vs. Andy Burnham.

This framing was extended by Williams attacking twitter and the media generally on the basis of one article by Parrot Tonee. It is wholly unfair to tarnish all media as inaccurate on the basis of one article.

The vast majority of media articles are factally correct: the overwhelming opposition to the Destroy the NHS / Health and Social Care Bill amoung health workers, Lansley censoring the media and getting chased down hospital corridors on hospital visits, Nick Clegg wanting to destroy the NHS since 2005.

The Neo-Liberal ‘Liberal-Democrat’ party supports the destruction of the NHS despite overwhelming opposition from the medical professions. It is huge arrogance from Williams, Clegg, Cammoron and Lansley to promote such a wrecking bill disregarding so much opposition from medical professionals. They are the people who really understand.

How the Orange Bookers took over the Lib Dems

…
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.
…

 

Continue ReadingNHS news review: Lib-Dem Neo-Con Conference