Chairman of the British Medical Association (BMA) Dr. Hamish Meldrum has written to all MPs providing details of the BMA’s objections to the Health and Social Care Bill. The BMA repeat their call that the Bill should be abandoned.
CONservative Prime Minister David Cameron claimed, last Thursday, in a factually incorrect, untrue and misleading way that “the whole health profession is on board for what is now being done”.
http://www.thisisdevon.co.uk/story-13207410-detail/story.html
The Prime Minister yesterday issued a passionate broadside in response to St Ives Liberal Democrat MP and Health Select Committee member Andrew George, who this week called on opponents to dig their heels in and derail service changes over concerns the NHS would become a profit-making machine at the expense of patient care.
And this is what St Ives Liberal Democrat MP and Health Select Committee member Andrew George has to say
BBC News – St Ives MP Andrew George rejects government health bill
St Ives Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George said he was concerned about the “potential risks” surrounding government policy on the NHS.
Mr George said he feared the health service would be “driven more by profit than by concern about patient care”.
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Mr George said he would refuse to support the bill.
“This is a view not just of my own but of the British Medical Association, the Royal College of GPs, Royal College of Nursing and many others,” he said.
A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
BBC News – St Ives MP Andrew George rejects government health bill
St Ives Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George said he was concerned about the “potential risks” surrounding government policy on the NHS.
Mr George said he feared the health service would be “driven more by profit than by concern about patient care”.
Related: Lib Dems hint at rebellion on health bill vote | Politics | guardian.co.uk
Trust is ‘fined’ £400k after missing treatment targets | Wilmslow Express – menmedia.co.uk
[Part of the NHS is fined for not having enough money …]
The trust has £167m to spend and planned a small surplus of £250,000 for this financial year.
But at the end of June the trust reported a surplus of only £7,000 – which it had hoped to be £283,000 for this quarter.
The trust is off-target because it was penalised for failing to treat enough patients within 18 weeks of referral.
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Taxpayers losing out on PFI – MPs « Shropshire Star
The powerful cross-party Public Accounts Committee, which scrutinises Government spending, said taxpayers should get a “much better deal” from private finance initiative (PFI) schemes than they currently do.
The MPs found PFI investors were using off-shore arrangements to minimise tax, adding further cost to the projects. Almost three-quarters of the shares in Innisfree, one of the leading PFI investment firms, are held off-shore, the committee heard.
The report said: “Tax planning and the use of tax havens as a way of avoiding UK tax are not uncommon. We heard that 72% of Innisfree’s shares are held by shareholders based in Guernsey.”
The UK has 700 PFI contracts, with a further 61 in procurement and many more being considered. But the MPs said: “Some of Government’s case for using PFI has not been based on robust analysis, but on ill founded comparisons and invalid assumptions.”
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A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
Lansley will ‘wash his hands’ of NHS if Health Bill passed, lawyers warn | GPonline.com by Susie Sell
Legal advice funded by campaign group 38 Degrees found that the Health Bill will take away the health secretary’s duty to provide a national health service through a ‘hands-off clause’.
This will ‘severely curtail’ the health secretary’s ability to influence the delivery of NHS care and to ensure everyone receives the best healthcare possible, it warned.
It said: ‘The Bill will make it impossible for the secretary of state to direct that certain services are available and difficult for the secretary of state to step in if these groups deliver poor healthcare to the local community.’
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Labour attacks NHS bill amendments | Society | guardian.co.uk Randeep Ramesh
Until this summer, the government had been pushing the idea that family doctors would form “consortia” to buy care. However, David Cameron’s team of experts, the Future Forum, advocated a name change since “consortia” gave the impression that GPs would be too powerful in the coalition’s new look NHS.
Instead GP consortia are to be called “clinical commissioning groups” and will have governing bodies with at least one nurse and one specialist doctor.
The result, say critics, is a bureaucratic nightmare with a slew of meaningless amendments which could obscure some potentially disastrous changes to the NHS bill, already the longest and most complex in the NHS’s history. MPs are to vote on the final report stage in the Commons next week.
Since the government only allowed two weeks to vote on the new bill earlier this summer, many say detailed scrutiny will be needed in the Lords to unearth the full implications for patients. Labour believe only one in 10 changes will be “new” amendments.
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NHS sheds 1500 jobs in just three months | Scotland | STV News
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said any reduction, particularly involving nursing staff, will cause concern but good progress was being made to cut the number of high-earning managers.
The number of staff fell by 1589 to 155,312 between June and March, equal to 1%. The number of nursing and midwifery staff decreased by 569 to 65,856.
The SNP’s political opponents said the figures show cuts to nurses despite election pledges to protect health spending.
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Unions campaign to save NHS – PCS Comment – PCS
The TUC wants people to do three things:
• Upload a picture to be used in a giant photo mosaic as part of an on-line vigil.
• Place a poster in your window in the run up to the third reading of the bill in early September.
• Lobby a random member of the House of Lords to defend the NHS when they discuss the bill. Use this link to find your Lord or Lady.
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MPs Brace For Email Onslaught As 38 Degrees Target Health And Social Care BillDina Rickman
The group say despite changes to the Health and Social Care Bill the NHS could still be subject to European competition laws, following the advice of two lawyers.
38 Degrees say the advice shows “private health companies will be able to take new NHS commissioning groups to court if they don’t win contracts”.
They also claim Andrew Lansley will no longer have a legal duty to provide a health service. “We can expect increases in postcode lotteries – and less ways to hold the government to account if the service deteriorates.”
Now they are urging their supporters to email their MP – particularly if they will be supporting the health and social care bill.
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Pressure Group 38degrees commissioned legal advice on the Liberal-Democrat – CONservative government’s Destroy the NHS Bill.
The legal advice confirms that the Bill will remove the duty on the Health Secretary to be responsible for providing a health service and that the NHS will be subject to competition law which, in turn, will promote private interests.
The proposed cut in legal aid to patients will cost the NHS very dearly.
CONservative Prime Minister David Cameron claims that “the whole health profession is on board for what is now being done”. It’s a deliberately misleading statement since much of the medical profession actively oppose his plans to destroy the NHS.
A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
NHS bill ‘will let Andrew Lansley wash his hands of health service’ | Society | The Guardian
The legal opinion, commissioned and paid for by members of the 38 Degrees website, justifies the widespread public concern about the government’s health reforms, in spite of Andrew Lansley‘s assurances that he has listened and responded to criticisms, they say.
The independent legal team says the health and social reform bill removes the health secretary’s responsibility for NHS provision through a “hands-off” clause designed to give autonomy to commissioning groups.
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Under the reformed Health and Social Care Bill, being put through Parliament by Andrew Lansley, regulators will no longer have a duty to promote price competition between public and private health providers.
But yesterday lawyers suggested that the concession would have no practical effect as EU competition and procurement law will force trusts to consider the price and value of services when commissioning or face challenges in the courts.
This could lead to significant fines or the cancelling of contracts – with a knock-on effect on patient care – if challenged by companies that lose out on contracts. It will also, the advice suggests, cost the new GP consortiums, set up to replace primary care trusts, millions of pounds in lawyers’ fees to ensure that their commissioning decisions are legally sustainable.
“The Government has simply failed to grapple with the frontline issues in procurement [and] has wholly underestimated the increasing rather than diminishing complexity in the area and has had no or perhaps little regard to the administrative and financial burdens arising from the regime,” the legal opinion concludes.
“The fact, however, that the Government has amended the Bill to remove… the duty to promote competition as an end in itself is arguably futile since the very fact that domestic and European competition law applies to the NHS arguably itself results in the promotion of competition since that is its aim.”
The opinion was commissioned by the campaign group 38 Degrees from lawyers at the Doughty Street and Monckton Chambers. It will be passed on to MPs debating the Bill, which is currently going through the House of Commons.
Its conclusions are likely to concern senior Liberal Democrats ahead of the party’s conference next month – as the removal of the competition clause was trumpeted by the party as a key concession won from the Conservatives.
Any suggestion that it is meaningless will anger activists and lead to calls for further reform to the legislation.
The report also concludes that if the Bill becomes law the duty of the Government to provide a “national” health service will have been diluted and it will reduce what is currently the “unfettered power” of the Health Secretary to impose his or her will on the NHS.
The legal advice adds that in the “clear intention of the Bill to give consortia autonomy from the Secretary of State, there is a real risk of an increase in the ‘postcode lottery’ nature of the delivery of some services, depending on the decisions made by consortia in relation to these subsections. And the intention of the Bill is that there will be very little that the Secretary of State can do about this in practice.”
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The man in charge of managing an NHS negligence bill that last year topped £1bn for the first time, told the Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, that his attempts to stop the state bankrolling medical cases would be counterproductive – and would “undoubtedly cause NHS legal costs to escalate massively”.
Steve Walker, chief executive of the NHS Litigation Authority (NHSLA), cautioned that the move would push alleged victims into the arms of lawyers offering “no win, no fee” deals, which would leave hospitals with hugely inflated bills every time they lost a case. The deals, also known as conditional fee agreements (CFAs), have been on the increase in recent years, with payments to claimant lawyers amounting to 76 per cent of the £257m outlay on legal costs for clinical negligence claims closed last year.
Mr Walker also suggested the move would lead to a conflict of interest between lawyers and clients seeking a fair settlement – amounting to “a danger that some very seriously injured and vulnerable claimants may be prejudiced by the desire of their lawyers to recover their costs”. Claimants in some of the most serious cases, including brain-damaged children and adults, could struggle to strike suitable CFAs – and face prohibitive charges including hefty “after the event” insurance premiums.
But the warnings, delivered in an official response to the Ministry of Justice, appear to have made little difference to the final Bill, which will be debated in Parliament when MPs return next month.
Pressure groups and the legal profession last night said the NHSLA’s comments revealed officials’ deep concerns over the dangers posed by Mr Clarke’s proposals, and they condemned his failure to amend the Bill to take account of the warnings.
Peter Walsh, of the charity Action against Medical Accidents, said: “All that will happen here is that Ken Clarke will be able to say he has saved a few millions on the legal aid budget, but elsewhere in Whitehall the NHS will be paying tens of millions more. At the same time, dozens of people will be excluded from justice and the NHS will not be learning from its mistakes.”
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This is Devon | Cameron defends health reforms during Cornwall visit
The Prime Minister yesterday issued a passionate broadside in response to St Ives Liberal Democrat MP and Health Select Committee member Andrew George, who this week called on opponents to dig their heels in and derail service changes over concerns the NHS would become a profit-making machine at the expense of patient care.
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dizzy
The Liberal-Denocrat CONservative coalition government is driving GPs away from the NHS.
A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
The perfect storm for early GP retirement | From the Editors | GPonline.com Blogs
GPs are working harder now than ever before. And, with uncertainty about the future because of the Health Bill, worries about lack of resources in the NHS due to spending constraints in the coming years and little prospect of any increase in pay, it’s no surprise that many GPs are thinking about hanging up their stethoscopes early.
Add to this the proposed changes to public sector pensions, which means that some doctors may be financially better off if they retire now, and the government is creating a perfect storm that makes early retirement seem the only sensible option to many GPs of a certain age.
UNISON Press | Press Releases Front Page
While sector talks continue, the unions have set up a campaign group to coordinate their responses and to prepare for the possibility of industrial action. Christina McAnea, UNISON Head of Health said:
“No union wants this, but our members are facing cuts in jobs, a pay freeze at a time of rising inflation, increasing workloads and stress, as well as the potential break-up of the NHS as we know it – in England at least.
“Now the Government is proposing an average 50% increase in pension contribution rates (more for higher paid staff) and staff will have to work longer to get less.”