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Benefits appeals system ‘on brink of collapse’

Lord Freud, Tory welfare reform minister says that the Con-Dem coalition scum government want to stop GPs signing patients off on long-term sick leave. This appears to be a particularly ridiculous decision by the Con-Dem coalition scum government which ignores the fact that it is GPs that will have intimite knowledge of their patients’ health issues.

BMJ Careers reports that huge numbers of Consultants are taking early retirement because they’re angered by ongoinging changes to the NHS.

The Royal College of Nursing reports that 50,000 jobs are under threat or have already gone in the health service in England. The Con-Dem coalition scum government disputes the figure.

100,000 NHS workers are expected to participate in the 30th November day of action over public-sector pensions.

Two nonsense NHS stories.

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.

Benefits appeals system ‘on brink of collapse’ | Politics | The Guardian

C4 investigation reveals government’s work capability assessment programme is clogged with costly, unresolved cases

Thousands of ill and disabled people have become trapped in a revolving door of medical assessments and appeals at a cost of £80m, with many claimants on their second and third attempts to overturn rulings that remove their benefits.

The government’s drive to cut Britain’s multibillion-pound welfare bill by moving long-term unemployed people off sickness benefit and into work is at risk of descending into chaos, according to a Channel 4 news investigation.

The work capability assessment programme, which assesses benefit claimants to see whether they are fit for work is “teetering on the brink of collapse” as the system becomes clogged up with appeals.

Ministers introduced more stringent medical tests as part of welfare reforms designed to cut the number of people claiming incapacity benefits, currently at 2.4 million. They say sickness benefits are too often abused as an excuse for being out of work, and have pledged to end what they call the “something for nothing” culture.But the number of appeals by claimants who believe they have been incorrectly assessed as medically able to work has quadrupled in two years, with the projected numbers for 2011-12 expected to reach 240,000.
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GPs Should Lose Power To Sign Patients Off Long-Term, Argues Tory Minister

Stripping GPs of the power to sign patients off on long-term sick leave could lead to “fewer wasted lives”, a Tory minister has insisted.

Lord Freud said the Government wanted to intervene earlier to stop patients drifting into “unnecessary” on-going state support.

A Coalition-commissioned report due next week will recommend that independent assessors rule on long-term sickness instead of GPs.
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Government is embarking on the biggest shake-up of the welfare state since its formation and the reforms include reassessing all sickness benefit claimants and replacing sick notes with fit notes that set out what work individuals are able to carry out while ill.
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NHS Dissatisfaction Linked To More Consultants Retiring Early, UK

A report by BMJ Careers today shows that the number of consultants who take voluntary early retirement in 2011 has soared up by almost three quarters compared with 2010. According to the BMA, this staggering rate reflects consultants’ growing dissatisfaction in terms of the ongoing changes within the NHS.

The report, based on new data obtained from the NHS Business Services Authority Pensions Division demonstrates that the number of consultants who have opted for voluntary early retirement before the age of 60 has risen by 72.4% from 2010 to 2011. Whilst 98 consultants opted for voluntary early retirement in 2010, the numbers increased to 169 in 2011. The proportion of consultants opting for early retirement has almost doubled over the last 5 years from 7.3% in 2006 to 14.0% in 2011.  

Deputy chairman of the BMA’s Consultants Committee, Ian Wilson explained that the reasons why many consultants chose to retire at the earliest possible opportunity is based on a combination of factors, including changes to NHS pensions, working increasingly long hours and increased work intensity, partly caused because of less junior doctors’ being available due to working time restrictions, as well as the reform of the NHS.

Dr. Wilson declared:

“Anecdotally doctors are telling us all the time that if they could retire, they would retire, whereas in the past doctors tended to want to carry on for as long as they were able to. People are feeling disempowered by NHS structures and NHS functioning, and there’s an attraction for people to retire from the rat race.”  
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BBC News – Nearly 50,000 NHS jobs ‘under threat’

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The RCN has been closely monitoring job cuts since April 2010.

The posts it has identified have either being lost already or are due to be cut by March 2015.

Many of them do not involve redundancies as the NHS tends to cut posts by not replacing staff who leave or retire.

The total highlighted – 48,029 – is the equivalent of shutting four large hospital trusts.

It includes all types of staff from administrators and porters to doctors and nurses.

The union also carried out an in-depth look at 41 trusts where cuts were being made.

In total, nearly half of the posts under threat were clinical and the scale of the cutbacks represented nearly a tenth of the workforce on average.

In the worst cases over 20% of the workforce was due to be culled.

The RCN said the findings were proof that the savings the NHS has to make – £20bn over the next four years – could not simply be achieved through efficiencies.
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More than 100,000 vote for pensions walkout | News | Nursing Times

More than 100,000 NHS workers have now voted to strike against changes to pensions, after two more unions announced their ballot results this week.
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Nonsense:
NHS introduces £1,500 talking plate which warns obese families about their eating habits | Mail Online

NHS paramedics given bullet-proof jackets over fears of a Mumbai-style terrorist attack | Mail Online

Post author:dizzy
Post published:21 November 2011
Post category:NHS politics
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Why cuts are the wrong cure from False Economy on Vimeo.

Growing waiting lists force the Con-Dem scum government to introduce waiting list targets.

Labour pledges to repeal NHS bill when they are re-elected.

GMB union to join the 30th Novermber public sector strike on the Con-Dem government attack on pensions.

Stafford Hospital is employing army medics to keep its Accident & Emergency department open. I didn’t realise that army medics had proper qualifications.

Wake Up Call Episode 2 “A Betrayal of Trust” from Health Emergency on Vimeo.

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.

NHS waiting times force coalition U-turn on targets | Society | The Guardian

The government has been forced to abandon its opposition to NHS waiting time targets and introduce a new rule to halt the growing number of patients not being treated within the promised 18 weeks.

The U-turn is a surprise because the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, had previously criticised waiting times measures introduced by Labour to speed up patient care as “arbitrary Whitehall targets”.

But fresh evidence that waiting times are creeping up, despite David Cameron’s pledge to keep them low, has forced Lansley to change tack and impose an extra treatment directive on the NHS. He had previously castigated targets as unnecessary, likely to distort NHS staff’s clinical priorities and part of a bureaucratic “top-down” system he intended to overhaul.

It has been prompted by the disclosure that, among the 2.6m patients waiting for treatment at any time, almost 250,000 (9.4%) do not get treated within the 18 weeks guaranteed in the NHS constitution. Among these, about 20,000 patients have been left untreated for at least a year.

On Thursday Lansley warned the NHS in England that, as of next year, no more than 8% of all patients waiting at any one time would be allowed to have had their treatment delayed by 18 weeks or more.
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Labour pledges to repeal NHS bill | Society | The Guardian

All provisions that turns health and social care services into a market-based system will be removed, says Andy Burnham

Labour have pledged to repeal the coalition’s controversial health and social care bill if they are re-elected, opening a new front in the debate over the NHS’s future.

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham committed the party to undoing the proposed radical reorganisation of the English NHS in a speech on Wednesday. “Labour will inherit a very different NHS – lots of damage will have already been done. And let me make it clear – if the bill in parliament goes through, we will repeal it”, he told delegates at the Royal College of Midwives’s annual conference in Brighton.

“We will return the NHS to a national system based on the principle of collaboration on which it was founded in 1948,” added Burnham, who also emphasised that, in making that pledge he was “not talking about protecting the status quo”.

His remarks are likely to be welcomed by medical organisations and campaigners against health secretary Andrew Lansley’s planned legislation, which has been approved by the House of Commons and is currently in its committee stage in the House of Lords.

But a source close to Lansley claimed Burnham, Labour’s last health secretary who returned to the shadow role in shadow cabinet reshuffle, was in effect proposing yet another restructuring of the NHS which staff would not support.
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GMB Set to Join Nov. 30 Walkout over Pensions – International Business Times

The GMB has voted to join a national strike over pensions to be held later this month.

The Nov. 30 walkout has been planned in protest against public sector pension reforms. A total of 33 percent of GMB members met and voted in favour of the strike by more than 4-1.

“It is now clear that millions of workers will be protesting on 30 November at the government’s attack on jobs and pensions,” GMB National Secretary Brian Strutton said.

Although the union has voted to join the strike, Strutton said there was still time for the government to negotiate and settle the issue of public sector pensions.

Strutton added: “The government has already accepted that the original proposals were unfair and wrong. It is not too late for the government to pull back from this confrontation and scrap this attack on pensions.”

The GMB is one of the UK’s largest unions with more than 600,000 members, including NHS and local government workers from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

UCATT, the union of construction workers, also voted recently to join the strike.

The strike, originally called by the TUC, has the support of 15 unions protesting against the government’s proposal to make public sector workers pay more and work longer to earn their pensions.
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Army medics drafted in to keep NHS hospital running – mirror.co.uk

ARMY medics have been drafted in to keep an NHS hospital running for the first time in Britain – because it does not have enough staff.

Stafford Hospital has been forced in to the move to keep its accident and emergency department open during the day.

But the hospital, which is currently at the centre of an inquiry into hundreds of deaths between 2005 and 2008, will still shut A&E at night due to staff shortages.

And the situation will reach crisis when the military medics pull out.

The hospital offered £100,000 salaries and £500 per extra four-hour shifts, but its poor reputation and a national shortage of NHS consultants made hiring impossible.

So two emergency consultants, used to battlefield medicine, and four senior nurses also provided by the Ministry of Defence will keep the ward open.

But Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust chiefs decided the department, which has only four of the six consultants it needs, must shut between 10pm and 8am from December 1 for three months. And the Trust admitted without “urgent action”, there “will be significant risks following withdrawal of the military support”.
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Post author:dizzy
Post published:18 November 2011
Post category:NHS politics
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There is an alternative: The case against cuts in public spending – PCS
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Tax justice

Addressing the ‘tax gap’ is a vital part of tackling the deficit. Figures produced for PCS by the Tax Justice Network show that £25 billion is lost annually in tax avoidance and a further £70 billion in tax evasion by large companies and wealthy individuals.

An additional £26 billion is going uncollected. Therefore PCS estimates the total annual tax gap at over £120 billion (more than three-quarters of the annual deficit!). It is not just PCS calculating this; leaked Treasury documents in 2006 estimated the tax gap at between £97 and £150 billion.

If we compare the PCS estimate of the tax gap with the DWP estimate of benefit fraud, we can see that benefit fraud is less than 1% of the total lost in the tax gap (see diagram opposite).

Employing more staff at HM Revenue & Customs would enable more tax to be collected, more investigations to take place and evasion reduced. Compliance officers in HMRC bring in over £658,000 in revenue per employee.

If the modest Robin Hood tax – a 0.05% tax on global financial transactions – was applied to UK financial institutions it would raise an estimated £20–30bn per year. This alone would reduce the annual deficit by between 12.5% and 20%.

Closing the tax gap, as part of overall economic strategy, would negate the need for devastating cuts – before even considering tax rises.

Our personal tax system is currently highly regressive. The poorest fifth of the population pay 39.9% of their income in tax, while the wealthiest fifth pays only 35.1%. We need tax justice in personal taxation – which would mean higher income tax rates for the richest and cutting regressive taxes like VAT and council tax.

Cut the real waste

While it is not necessary to cut a penny in public expenditure due to the ‘deficit crisis’, there are of course areas of public spending which could be redirected to meet social needs.

In the civil and public services, we know there are massive areas of waste – like the £1.8 billion the government spent on private sector consultants last year. The government could get better advice and ideas by engaging with its own staff and their trade unions.

There is also the waste of the government having 230 separate pay bargaining units, when we could have just one national pay bargaining structure.

There are also two other large areas where government costs could be cut.

Trident

The current Trident system costs the UK around £1.5 billion every year.

A private paper prepared for Nick Clegg (in 2009, when in opposition) estimated the total costs of Trident renewal amounting to between £94.7bn and £104.2bn over the lifetime of the system, estimated at 30 years. This equates to £3.3bn per year.

At the time Nick Clegg (now Deputy Prime Minister) said: “Given that we need to ask ourselves big questions about what our priorities are, we have arrived at the view that a like-forlike Trident replacement is not the right thing to do.”

The 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto committed the Party to: “Saying no to the like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system, which could cost £100 billion.”

PCS policy is to oppose the renewal of Trident and invest the money saved in public services, whilst safeguarding Ministry of Defence staff jobs.

War in Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan is currently costing £2.6 billion per year. The war is both unwinnable and is making the world less safe. More important than the financial cost are the countless Afghan and British lives that are being lost in this conflict.

The PCS alternative…

There is no need for cuts to public services or further privatisations
Creating jobs will boost the economy and cut the deficit. Cutting jobs will damage the economy and increase the deficit
We should invest in areas such as housing, renewable energy and public transport
The UK debt is lower than other major economies
There is a £120 billion tax gap of evaded, avoided and uncollected tax
The UK holds £850 billion in banking assets from the bailout – this is more than the national debt
We could free up billions by not renewing Trident
End the use of consultants

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17.05.11: Steve Bell on David Cameron's NHS reforms speech

Post author:dizzy
Post published:17 November 2011
Post category:NHS politics
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http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/targets

The banks have run the global economy into the ground. Bankers, encouraged by the government, gambled recklessly with our money, and they lost. Spectacularly. Remember 2008? In the UK, the government decided it had to step in with a bail-out because these banks were ‘too big to fail’. According to the Bank of England, the cost of this bail-out now exceeds £1trillion. The result is that all high street banks- from Barclays to RBS- owe their existence to public financing.

What did we get for our billions? A banking system that serves ordinary people rather than the super-rich? No. Regretful bankers who refuse to reward themselves with massive bonuses? No. How about increased financial regulation to ensure this crisis couldn’t happen again? No. The government has done nothing to stop it being business as usual for banks.

What’s worse, the money that was given to the bankers is the money now being taken from the poorest in society, guaranteeing a rise in poverty, debt and inequality. Nearly £7 billion will be paid out in bank bonuses this year. This sum is more than the first wave of public spending cuts. We are not all in this together because it’s us who will pay if education, health, housing, libraries, woodland and much, much more, disappears from our lives.

Who’s telling us we must make these cuts? A government led by a cabinet of millionaires, in bed with the bankers, which is now pulling off an audacious con-trick in front of our eyes.

This is how their story goes. The crisis was caused by a bloated public sector. We binged away all our money on luxuries like healthcare and free education and council services, care for the elderly, for people with disabilities, school sports and free school meals for children living in poverty. Now the country is bankrupt and we must repent, detox, cut back. We have to relinquish our welfare state to appease the circling money men. Welcome to the Age of Austerity but don’t worry because we are all in this together.

We say – don’t believe their lies. This is their crisis, but there is no austerity for the bankers.

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.

Hospitals cutting surgery follow-up checks to save cash – mirror.co.uk

By LACHLAN MACKINNON, Health Correspondent

Hospital bosses are facing claims they are cutting post-surgery care because it is an “easy target” to save cash.

The ratio of patient checks following operations has dropped over the past two years and looks set to be cut again.
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Critics warned that patients are being discharged back to GPs too early and family doctors may not have the time, funding or necessary skills to deal with problems.

Richard Hoey, editor of Pulse magazine, which analysed data from all 168 acute hospital trusts in England, said: “Reducing post-operative checks has been seen as an easy target by NHS managers looking for efficiencies. Often they will leave patients short of the follow-up care they’d expect.”

Based on last year’s total of 10.1 million operations, calculations show there were 22.2 million post-surgery appointments.

This is 1.2 million fewer than would have been expected based on 2009/10 rates – and 1.6 million fewer than four years ago.

However, the drop may be even higher as the number of operations carried out on the NHS is increasing year on year.

But the Department of Health insisted: “All patients with a clinical need for a follow-up appointment in hospital should have one.

“We have not set targets to reduce such appointments and have no plans to do so.”

Patients denied operations at the last minute, say GPs – Telegraph

GPs say they are referring patients on one set of criteria, only for the patients to be told during pre-operative hospital checks that they no longer qualify.

Dr Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said primary care trusts (PCTs) – which pay for pre-planned operations – were guilty of treating patients like “commodities”.

She said: “Patients must not be treated as commodities and pushed back and forwards.”

PCTs started tightening up on qualifying criteria for ‘elective’ operations at least a year ago, for example demanding that patients had to demonstrate higher thresholds of pain or disability before being allowed hip or knee replacements. Other common procedures affected include removals of cataract and skin tissue like bunions and gangalions.

Some believe this rationing is reflected in NHS statistics which show the number of overall referrals from GP has dropped in the last year.
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Labour intends to force a vote in the Lords to suspend considering the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill until the secret report on its risks to the NHS is released by the Con-Dem scum government. The Information Commissioner has ruled that the suppressed report should be published.

I can exclusively reveal a brief summary of the suppressed report. It says “The Health and Social Care Bill is likely to destroy the NHS as a viable health care system. Having abolished the NHS, private healthcare and health insurance will develop on the American model. The plebs will be f****d but the ultra-rich who don’t use the NHS will be fine”.

The government suffered a minor defeat on the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill in the House of Lords over the issue of charities having to pay VAT. There is symbolism to this defeat i.e. further aspects can be defeated.

Cathy Warwick, chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives has criticied the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill as a ‘pointless waste’ and attacked the banks for causing the huge national debt.

UK Uncut

Philip Green is a multi-billionaire businessman, who runs some of the biggest names on British high streets. His retail empire includes brands such as Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge and British Home Stores.

Philip Green is not a non-dom. He lives in the UK. He works in the UK. He pays tax on his salary in the UK. All seems to be in order. Until you realise that Philip Green does not actually own any of the Arcadia group that he spends every day running. Instead, it is in the name of his wife who has not done a single day’s work for the company. Mrs Green lives in Monaco, where she pays not a penny of income tax.

In 2005 Philip Green awarded himself £1.2bn, the biggest paycheck in British corporate history. But this dividend payout was channeled through a network of offshore accounts, via tax havens in Jersey and eventually to Green’s wife’s Monaco bank account. The dodge saved Green, and cost the tax payer, close to £300m. This tax arrangement remains in place. Any time it takes his fancy, Green can pay himself huge sums of money without having to pay any tax.

Before the election, the Lib Dems liked to talk tough on tax avoiders. But as soon as they entered the coalition, this pre-election bluster became just another inconvenient promise they quietly forgot. In August David Cameron appointed the country’s most notorious serial-tax avoider to advise the government on how best to slash public spending. Not a single Lib Dem minister uttered a word of complaint. A Guardian editorial denounced this as “shameful”.

Philip Green’s £285m tax dodge could pay for:

* The full, hiked up £9,000 fees for almost 32,000 students
* Pay the salaries of 20,000 NHS nurses

And if that’s not reason enough to take action against Sir Philip, it is worth noting that he has built his £5bn fortune on the back of sweatshop labour, using Mauritius sweatshops where Sri Lankans, Indians and Bangladeshis toil 12 hours a day, six days a week, for minimal pay.

In the press

* Philip Green is an odd choice for efficiency tsar
* Philip Green’s tax affairs should be investigated, Lib Dem MPs urge
* Sir Philip Green under attack over personal tax affairs
* Vince Cable’s dig at Sir Philip Green’s tax status
* Sir Philip Green tax avoider gets job on the side

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.

Labour to force early vote on secret NHS report – Burnham & Thornton | The Labour Party

Labour will force a vote in the House of Lords this Wednesday to put further pressure on the Government to release its assessment of the risks to the NHS posed by its re-organisation.

Last week, the Information Commissioner ordered the release of the Department’s risk register, following pressure by Labour. The Government has fought to keep it out of the public domain and has yet to respond to the ruling.

On Wednesday, Labour will ask the House of Lords to postpone further consideration of the Health & Social Care Bill until the register has been released.

Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, has today written to Andrew Lansley requesting immediate release and said:

“Following this ruling, Andrew Lansley has nowhere left to hide. The information is vital to a full understanding of his Bill and the risks it poses to the NHS.

“I have always said that combining the biggest ever reorganisation and facing the financial challenge will expose the NHS to unacceptable risk.

“The ruling clearly said it’s in the public interest to have this information in the public domain. If he digs in and fights this, people will begin to ask what has the Health Secretary has to hide.”

Baroness Thornton, Labour’s Shadow Health Minister, speaking at the start of proceedings this afternoon, described the document’s publication as “completely pertinent” to the passage of the Bill through the Lords. Glenys Thornton called on the Government to make the document readily available before Wednesday, or Labour will force a vote in the Lords to suspend the Bill’s reading until the register is released.
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Express.co.uk – Home of the Daily and Sunday Express | UK News :: Government defeated over NHS reform

The Government has suffered a defeat in the Lords over its controversial health care reforms.

Peers voted by 195 to 183, majority 12, to require the Health Secretary to report on the VAT treatment of supplies by charities providing health care services for the NHS.

It was the first defeat inflicted on ministers during the Health and Social Care Bill’s marathon 14-day report stage.

Moving the amendment to the Bill, Labour’s Lord Patel of Bradford warned of “major inequality” over irrecoverable VAT for charities providing health care services.

He said that while the NHS was able to recover VAT on certain supplies, charities were not.

And when services were transferred from the NHS to the charitable sector there was a “VAT gap” that had to be filled by charitable funds.
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NHS reforms are a ‘pointless waste’ top midwife warns – Telegraph

The NHS reforms are ‘yet another pointless reorganisation’ that will ‘waste’ several billion pounds, the head of the Royal College of Midwives has warned.

Cathy Warwick, chief executive of the College, said the reforms, which will see doctors-led groups handling most of the NHS budget, were ‘risky and ill-thought through’.

Speaking at the annual conference in Brighton, Prof Warwick also attacked the banks, saying irresponsible and reckless behaviour’ had caused the huge national debt and the pensions of public sector workers, including midwives, were being sacrificed to clear the black hole.

She warned that maternity services were being stretched and midwives’ pensions were being sacrificed in order to clear the national debt ’caused by the irresponsible and reckless behaviour of the banks’.

The proportion of NHS money spent on maternity care is at its lowest point since the 1990s, Prof Warwick said, despite the country facing a major baby boom.

She added: “There is a growing disparity between the increasing demands that are made on midwives and the dwindling resources that they have at their disposal.

“This is compounded by a widening gap between the rhetoric about how maternity services should be and the reality that midwives experience on a daily basis.

“When it comes to staffing, the rhetoric is that there are more midwives than ever before.

“The reality in England is that the midwifery shortage is becoming a crisis.

“Yes the number of midwives in England has increased but by nowhere near enough to keep pace with the growth in their workload.”

On funding, she said the rhetoric was that the NHS budget has been maintained and there are no cuts to front line services.

“The reality, as you will know all too well, is that budgets are being squeezed and services are being cut.”
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Post author:dizzy
Post published:15 November 2011
Post category:NHS politics
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