NHS « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘NHS’

How much does the government love the NHS?

11/04/2011, 10:35:33 AM

In an attempt to save themselves from the hands of voters, nurses, Norman Lamb, the BMA… Cameron, Lansley and Clegg have begun a desperate “listening exercise”. Just in case the cynical public weren’t sure they were really listening -and began to question if they really could trust big Dave with the NHS – they’ve published a pamphlet alongside the photo calls: Working together for a stronger NHS.

And just to make absolutely certain we didn’t get confused into thinking their rushed, ill thought out reforms were ideologically driven, the introduction tells us that they “love” the NHS. Four times. Four. That’s how much they love it.

“We love the NHS. The NHS is our most precious national asset. Every second hundreds of people walk through its doors. Every week it saves thousands of lives. Every year millions of us rely on it. We love the NHS because its there when the people we love fall ill. Because its there all the time. Because whoever you are, wherever you are from, however much money you have got in the bank, theres somewhere to go to get looked after. And because that says amazing things about our country. That’s why we love the NHS”

John Healey has written to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, to question the political nature of the cringe worthy photo calls and the “synthetic sentimentalism” of the sickening love letter.

John Healey – Gus O’Donnell

Posted in Inside | No Comments »

Sunday News Review

03/04/2011, 07:24:55 AM

Horror returns to Northern Ireland

A 25-year-old Catholic police recruit was been killed by a booby trap car bomb at his home in Omagh, County Tyrone, on Saturday. The device exploded under 25-year-old Constable Ronan Kerr’s car outside his home in Omagh, Co Tyrone, just before 4pm. The officer had only finished his training in December. He was getting into the vehicle in the residential Highfield Close development, off the main Gortin Road, when neighbours rushed to help him, some using fire extinguishers to put out flames from the explosion. He was the second police officer to be murdered since the formation of the Police Service of Northern Ireland out of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 2001 as part of the peace process. – Sunday Telegraph

Deadly terrorism returned to the scene of Northern Ireland’s worst atrocity yesterday after a young Catholic policeman was murdered by a car bomb in Omagh. Ronan Kerr, 25, who was was killed in the booby-trap blast outside his home as he prepared to go to work, had only just completed his training. Last night tributes were paid to PC Kerr, who represented a new generation of officers trying to repair the image of the province’s police among the Catholic community. Last night Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin Guinness is understood to have visited Mr Kerr’s family. British Prime Minister David Cameron said: ‘Those who carried out this wicked and cowardly crime will never succeed in dragging Northern Ireland back to a dark and bloody past,’ he warned. Their actions are rejected by the overwhelming majority of people from all parts of the community.’ – Mail on Sunday

Cameron humiliates Lansley over NHS reforms

Defiant Health Secretary Andrew Lansley yesterday ruled out a major u-turn in his NHS reforms – in a direct confrontation with Downing Street. He has faced a growing chorus of critics, ranging from medical organisations to MPs, and is even opposed in his own constituency. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg demanded substantial changes after a vote overwhelmingly against the plans at his Lib Dem spring conference. And PM David Cameron is now said to have accepted the need for “clarifications” on the pace and scale of the reforms. – the Sun

David Cameron will announce this week another humiliating climbdown, putting the brakes on the Government’s health reforms in a desperate attempt to rescue his reputation as a defender of the NHS. In the latest embarrassing example of the Prime Minister being forced to intervene in the policy of one of his ministers, Mr Cameron will publicly admit to mistakes in the plan by the Secretary of State, Andrew Lansley, to hand £80bn of health spending to family doctors, characterised by critics as privatisation by the back door. Mr Cameron will announce a “pause” of up to three months in the progress of the Health and Social Care Bill through Parliament, to allow for more time to reassure clinicians, patients and coalition MPs. One option being considered is a series of public meetings at which Mr Lansley would be forced to restate the case for reform in a less confrontational manner. – Independent on Sunday

Embarrassment for the Yes campaign

The “Yes” campaign, which is supported by Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, was severely embarrassed after it emerged that it had removed the poet Benjamin Zephaniah from leaflets destined for the home counties, while leaving him in leaflets distributed in London. Mr Zephaniah is one of six celebrities who adorn a leaflet from the “Yes” campaign calling on householders to back the Alternative Vote in a forthcoming referendum on May 5 in which people will be asked if they want to change Britain’s voting system. He appears alongside Joanna Lumley, Eddie Izzard, Colin Firth, Honor Blackman and Stephen Fry in the leaflet which was delivered in London and which is signed by Katie Ghose, chair of Yes To Fairer Votes. However, in an identical leaflet sent to other parts of the country including Sussex and Cornwall the poet is not there. Only white celebrities are featured and Mr Zephaniah is replaced by a picture of the actor Tony Robinson. – Sunday Telegraph

Clegg likes Plan B, lets hope it’s not just his music taste

For the first time last night Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg held a Q and A in a cinema. The session was hosted by Capital at the Showcase Cinema De Lux in Leicester and more than a hundred people from Leicester, Loughborough and Nottingham turned up. Capital didn’t just speak to the Deputy PM about politics though. The Deputy PM told us how much he loves Plan B‘s album, his secret passion for cartoons and his funniest moment in power so far….telling his son he wasn’t the Prime Minister. – Capital FM

Posted in Unbound | No Comments »

Friday News Review

25/03/2011, 06:40:38 AM

Calamity Clegg

It was supposed to be all about promoting the Budget plans for economic growth. Twenty-one Enterprise Zones are being set up in unemployment hotspots and David Cameron and Nick Clegg were at the Boots HQ in Nottingham to celebrate one of the first of them being set up right next door. Then at the end of a question and answer session with Boots employees, the PM and the DPM were asked about where we’d all be in 2015. David Cameron said in a jokey closing remark that they’d probably be having election TV leaders’ debates and that this time it might be ”a bit better natured between the two of us.” The two men then take the applause and walk off the stage … BUT Nick Clegg forgets he has his microphone on and says to David Cameron as they leave the room: ”If we keep doing this we won’t find anything to bloody disagree on in the bloody TV debates.” David Cameron laughs then Nick Clegg looks down at lapel realising, a la Gordon Brown and “bigot-gate,” that he’s forgotten to take the mike off. His press chief, Lena Pietsch, gives an anxious sideways look to Ed Lewellyn, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff. – Gary Gibbon, Channel4 News

A gaffe by Nick Clegg looks likely to fuel fears among backbench Coalition MPs about his enduring friendship with David Cameron. After a question and answer session with members of the public, the Lib Dem leader was recorded yesterday telling the Prime Minister: ‘If we keep doing this, we won’t find anything to bloody disagree on in the bloody TV debates.’ Mr Cameron laughed, before Mr Clegg realised he had left his lapel microphone on. Gordon Brown suffered a similar fate during the General Election campaign when he was recorded describing angry Labour voter Gillian Duffy as a ‘bigot’. It will intensify fears among both Lib Dem and Tory MPs that the pair’s close relationship shows they are happier with each other than with their own MPs. Some fear their partnership could even lead a so-called ‘purple plot’, with the Coalition continuing beyond this Parliament. – Daily Mail

The Labour Party last night threatened to pull the plug on three-way televised debates at the next General Election after Nick Clegg was inadvertently recorded telling David Cameron that the pair “won’t find anything to bloody disagree on”. His remarks were immediately seized on by Labour who suggested that it would be inappropriate to have a three-way televised debate as Mr Clegg was effectively now just Mr Cameron’s deputy. “What we think should happen is that David Cameron debates with Ed Miliband while Nick Clegg debates with our deputy leader Harriet Harman. Clegg’s comments have reinforced our view that the next election will offer the choice between two directions for the country: a Tory led coalition and a progressive majority represented by Labour.” He added Labour’s concerns would be raised in negotiations with the broadcasters over the next set of TV debates. – the Independent

Cameron’s broken promises

David Cameron stood accused yesterday of breaking two key election promises in the Budget. The Government is set to axe NHS funding by nearly £1billion – despite a vow to increase health spending. And millions of pensioners will lose up to £100 in winter fuel payments in a cut sneaked out in the Budget small print. An analysis by the highly-respected Institute for Fiscal Studies showed yesterday rising inflation means NHS funding will fall 0.9% over the next four years, equivalent to a cut of £900million. Chancellor George Osborne has helped to cook the books by reducing the baseline from which the Government measures health spending. But the IFS said that even with the new baseline Mr Osborne will struggle to maintain NHS spending above “zero” and was “sailing very close to the wind”. The organisation also warned public services face an extra £4billion cut due to inflation, and household incomes will fall by £1,500 over the course of the Parliament. Gemma Tetlow of the IFS said: “There is a 30% chance that further tax increases or deeper spending cuts will be needed.” Shadow Health Secretary John Healey said yesterday: “The small print of the Budget confirms David Cameron is letting the NHS down, and has broken his promise to protect the NHS. With the Office for Budget Responsibility’s new inflation forecasts, NHS England is in fact facing a real-terms cut of £1billion.” – Daily Mirror

The coalition is embroiled in a row over its health pledges after it emerged that the budget contained a cut in the NHS‘s spending power of almost £1bn.Labour accused ministers of reneging on their repeated promise to increase the NHS’s budget in real terms every year throughout this parliament. Revised upward predictions of inflation in the budget by the Office for Budget Responsibility show that the NHS in England will undergo a cut of £1bn in its spending power by 2015. It also reveals that its budget will be cut in each of the next two financial years, alleged shadow health secretary John Healey. He was supported by Professor John Appleby, chief economist at the King’s Fund, who calculated that the NHS would have £910m less to spend over that period. “It looks like the government won’t meet its pledge to give a year-on-year real rise to the NHS each year during this parliament,” he said. – the Guardian

How are you getting to the march tomorrow?

But tomorrow tens of thousands of people will come to a march and rally in London to show there is an alternative. It should be a march of the mainstream. Nurses, cleaners, care workers and council staff should be there to urge the Conservative-led administration to have a change of course. There are expected to be 600 coachloads, nine special trains and thousands will attend by public transport. One man is walking from Cardiff. And I will be joining them in Hyde Park to add my voice to the many. For me there is one thing that links all our concerns. It is the threat that these cuts pose to the next generation. This is what I have called the betrayal of the British Promise. If anybody wants a reason to join this Saturday’s demonstration, there are many – the need to show there is an alternative, to save our services, to show the cuts are going too deep and too fast. But I would also urge people to join us to protect the promise we in the past have made to our children. This is what Saturday should be about. Let us make Saturday a one-nation demonstration against the politics of division. – Ed Miliband, Daily Mirror

Posted in Unbound | No Comments »

GP commissioning: how some GPs could make a shed load of money

07/03/2011, 12:00:29 PM

by Andy Howell

Do general practitioners (GPs) stand to make enormous profits on the back of the government’s GP commissioning reforms? Government ministers have responded to such suggestions aggressively, arguing that recent stories to this effect are simply the result of scaremongering of behalf of their political opponents.

However, talk to almost anyone involved in running local health services and they will tell you that it is inevitable that there will be huge profits to be made by GPs through commissioning, and they are not happy about it.

But if there are huge profits to be had, then how are they to be made and where will we have to look to find them? Will the opening up of GP services to profit-based ventures change the nature of our NHS forever?

It is not difficult to find experts in public sector organisation and finance who will tell you how they expect the new commissioning service to develop. Here is one such scenario that maps out what we might be letting ourselves in for.

Initially, I thought it might be difficult to monitor profits and to understand exactly how they were being made. After all, GP practices are not limited companies and as such they do not produce public accounts. But the experts tell me that it is not in established GP practices that money is to be made.

The new profits will come through newly commissioned services which, as limited companies, can be developed in very different ways to traditional GP practices. The key to understanding how the money may be made involves appreciating that local GPS will be able to be both commissioners of local services and providers of local services at the same time. There is no rigid separation of purchaser and provider here.

Let us consider two GPs who work on the same patch. Let’s call them Fred and Sally. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | No Comments »

The sacred cow: splice, dice and if that fails blow the s**t out of it

25/02/2011, 02:30:57 PM

by Dave Howells

What Tony Blair did in three words, “Education, education, education”, David Cameron did in three letters: “N.H.S”. That was how he set his stall out at the last election. If they couldn’t get away with being “the party of the NHS”, try though they might, at least they could be “the party that wouldn’t fuck it up”.

Before 1997, Labour had a similar problem with the economy, so New Labour was born and the party was rebranded as one that was pro-business and “extremely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. Labour committed to stick to the Tories’ spending plans during its first two years in office. There. Done. Now the country could exorcise itself from the grip of the Tories without having to worry that a Labour chancellor might give the Treasury PIN number to too many poor people, or that the wheels would come off UK Plc.

In 2010, the Tory problem was being trusted full stop. But they were particularly vulnerable to accusations that they might go selling off “the family silver”, especially our treasured National Health Service. Because, after all, when it comes to flogging off state-owned assets to the private sector at bargain basement prices – be they railways, telephone networks, council houses, or (more recently) forests – the Conservatives have got form. So, in a move straight out of the New Labour playbook, the Tories said they would stick to Labour’s spending plans, funding for the NHS would be maintained at its existing levels (in-line with inflation, no less), and there would be no more costly “top-down reorganisations”. Oh, and Dave changed their logo to a tree and rode around on a bike a bit. There. Done. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 6 Comments »

Cameron fails the leadership test

22/02/2011, 07:00:22 AM

by Stefan Stern

One industry that seems likely to be recession-proof is the one that is constantly coming up with new management fads and theories about leadership. The production line of gurus with books to sell and lecture halls to fill never sleeps. With a Twitter feed and a Facebook page we can all be experts now. This may or may not represent progress.

Leadership provokes more guru-fuelled debate than any other topic. The subject is discussed not merely on the business pages, but in the sports sections and of course in political coverage. You are about to get a few more paragraphs on the subject here (leave quietly if you’ve already heard enough). Because it is David Cameron’s particular brand – pun intended – of leadership that lies at the heart of the continuing “big society” debate. The idea will sink or swim thanks to the Cameron approach. That is why I think it is already sinking, if it isn’t quite sunk, yet. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 3 Comments »

NHS: Cumbrian case study shows Labour, not the Tories, are the reformers.

28/01/2011, 01:00:32 PM

By Jonathan Todd

Labour’s compassion built the NHS under Attlee and Labour’s investment saved the NHS under Blair and Brown. But it is Labour reform that has kept Cumbria’s community hospitals open and achieved better health outcomes in so doing. These successes are now threatened by Tory incompetence.

Gerry Robinson, the management guru who once tried to “fix the NHS”, bemoaned the lack of piloting contained in Andrew Lansley’s NHS plan on the Today programme last year. The presenter (Evan Davis, as I recall) then misdirected him towards Cumbria. While Cumbria may have much GP commissioning, it has benefitted from Labour reform, not opened a window on Lansley’s future.

The Financial Times reports that Cumbria offers “a glimpse into what the … government’s healthcare revolution could look like”. It may be that Lansley’s spinners have been whispering in the ears of Davis and the Financial Times, but Cumbria isn’t the first domino to fall in Lansley’s revolution. It is benefitting from a flowering of reform championed by Lord Darzi and patiently cultivated by NHS workers. Evolution would have meant more such reform, not a “grenade tossed into the PCTs”. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 5 Comments »

Cameron’s operation Barbarossa

21/01/2011, 07:00:08 AM

by Dan Hodges

It was a moving scene. David Cameron fixed the final clasp on his greatcoat, set his tall Shako cap upon his head and slid the brown leather pack across his broad shoulders. There was much he wanted to say to his tearful wife and children, but the words would not come. Instead, he turned and, without a backward glance, stepped into the darkness and was gone.

When the prime minister announced on Monday his comprehensive NHS reform programme, he was announcing the invasion of Russia. Cameron is about to drive his party through thousands of miles of cruel, frozen, inhospitable terrain. They will face fear, famine and deprivation. Experience suffering beyond endurance. And then they will come home, broken, bitter and defeated.

“Every year we delay, every year without improving our schools is another year of children let down, another year our health outcomes lag behind the rest of Europe, another year that trust and confidence in law and order erodes”, he said. Brave words. Defiant words. Utterly, utterly futile words. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 10 Comments »

Trolleys in corridors: only a matter of time

01/01/2011, 10:00:22 AM

by Tom Keeley

The government’s “reforms” are not the most immediate threat to the NHS. The real term spending cuts are. In 2011, the health service will start to feel the effects of the Tory budget. Which will, inevitably, reduce the standard of care it can provide.

The Conservatives claim to have ring-fenced spending by essentially freezing the budget. However, the rising demand for and cost of healthcare means that funding needs to increase, at well above the rate of inflation, in order for the NHS to stand still.

The last seven years have seen the cost of staff pensions rocket from just over £6 billion in 2004 to over £17 billion in 2011. The cost of PFIs will increase by an estimated £7 billion over the next four years. Furthermore, the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, has demanded that £20 billion worth of “efficiency” savings be made, by the most efficient health service in the world, by 2014. And let us not forget the estimated £3 billion cost of the Tory health reforms. (more…)

Posted in Grassroots | 5 Comments »

Letwin checking up on Lansley: John Healey’s letter to David Cameron

03/12/2010, 10:56:41 AM

Rt Hon David Cameron MP

Prime Minister

10 Downing Street

London

SW1A 2AA

01 December 2010

I welcome the review of the Health Secretary’s plans for the NHS that you have asked Oliver Letwin to undertake, confirmed by No10 and the Treasury to the Financial Times and reported today.

This is the right time for the review, before the Government gets any deeper into the high-cost, high-risk internal reorganisation that Andrew Lansley set out in his White Paper in July.

My concern is for the future of the NHS, and this is entrusted to you and your Health Secretary for now.

This is set to be a period of severe financial squeeze for the NHS. Despite your promise to protect the NHS and to protect NHS funding, the health service is already showing signs of strain. This time next year, when the NHS will be operating on funding from the first year of your Spending Review, rather than the last year of ours, these strains will be much clearer to patients and the public.

This is a period during which the efforts of all in the NHS should be dedicated to making sound efficiencies and improving patient care. It is therefore exactly the wrong time to be forcing the NHS through what the King’s Fund Chief Executive describes as “the biggest organisational upheaval in the health service, probably, since its inception”. (more…)