SAFE IN WHOSE HANDS?

With just over 100 days to go until the General and Local Government Elections, politicians both at national and local level and from all sides of the political spectrum have metaphorically taken their places in the ring and will be slugging it out between now and 7 May'

As the policy battles begin at national level, locally, as in previous years, we are starting to hear a lot of misinformation from certain local members of the Labour run Tameside council, who regularly blart-out their blinkered version of a given situation before they have checked the relevant position of their arse and their elbow!

Why is it, as soon as any level of election is on the horizon our local career councillors turn their attentions to matters in which they cannot possibly have any influence rather than concentrating their efforts on local issues, which, if nothing else tends to demonstrates an attentive attitude to their local constituents’ concerns?

In other words why not just tell us how they intend to perform their duties as 'public servants' carrying out the will of local people!

This week’s letter allegedly from Cllr Taylor, was a perfect example of this political phenomenon, where he took up the only weaponry in Labour’s armoury (Ed Miliband's words) and jumped on the NHS bandwagon.

In his usual rhetorical style, he asks why it is that A & E waiting times have suddenly ‘gone through the roof’ and predictably blamed it all on ‘the coalition cuts’

No mention of the fact that Tony Blair and his many, health secretaries, decided to remove the responsibility for out-of-hours care from GPs and hand it to primary care trusts. Nor any explanation as to why in Labour’s target-obsessed NHS where, as the Francis report into what happened at Mid-Staffs revealed, told us that ‘compassion’ can be lacking!

Let's face it, the NHS that was, has long gone, and in its place is a system that is not working.

For instance, our local GP surgery used to have an open door system; a first come first served, policy. Patients were happy to arrive and take their turn, there was a steady flow of patients receiving treatment, the GPs were busy the entire time they were at the surgery and because there was no appointment system, there were no 'no shows'. Then the local health board, in its infinite wisdom, said the surgeries must move to an appointment system! Needless to say, it was difficult to get an immediate appointment, mostly taking anything up to 10 days, 'no shows' increased, fewer patients were seen by their GP and numbers attending A&E went through the roof!

In essence the prime objective of the recent NHS reform programme was, like that of the Blair government, ‘marketisation’ – which introduced a shift from bureaucratic planning and cost-based resource allocation to a model in which funding is allocated to healthcare providers according to their ability to attract patients within some sort of competitive market.

Both attempts at this NHS reform also involved a degree of privatisation – in simple terms, a change in the ownership of healthcare assets, as non-state purveyors of various types expand their production of healthcare.

Now with the NHS becoming the General Elections political football, this situation is currently of some significance, because about 5% of NHS expenditure in England is spent on healthcare services supplied by private companies and voluntary organisations.

Significantly, John Taylor’s writer also failed to mention all the debt accrued by the private finance initiatives (PFI), the absurd public-private partnerships that proved very profitable for a few companies but utterly disastrous for the public purse. Labour essentially sold off the family silver and we’ll never get back many of the buildings, resources and land that we gave to the private sector under ludicrously in-equitable terms. 

Sadly, there’s not much we can do about that now. We have to cut our losses and try to get out of these PFI deals.

The sad truth is, the NHS needs to be reformed but based instead on patent outcomes. The problem is a patient outcome based healthcare system would be painful for politicians, because it would require them to put aside their ideologies. The attempts at reformation, first by the Labour government and then subsequently the coalition to introduce more efficiency through competition have in fact meant an explosion of expensive bureaucracy.

Therefore, the current political mindset is that further NHS reforms would be a vote-loser.

From Labour’s point of view, any suggestion of further change is met by a wall of self interested protest. It’s their default position on most policies and in particular a deeply entrenched problem at the heart of any struggle to improve the NHS - total resistance to change of any kind. All that seems to matter to the political class, as they position themselves for their election campaigns, is demonstrating a commitment to maintaining the ideological purity of the institution. Patient outcomes and quality of service appear to be an irrelevance.

If we’re honest we all know that the NHS, as it stands, is a mess and we all know that all politicians agree that the NHS should remain ‘free’ at the point of treatment. Therefore it’s about time that the voting public get a proper debate on the future of the NHS rather than the distorted shouting match over privatisation that Labour's deception permits. Despite the range of experiences from brilliant to abysmal, our parties are terrified to suggest a different model of delivery for fear of the electoral consequences.

The councillor then went on to mention that the government had ‘found’ £700 million to ease the burden at A & E departments and suggested that it would probably cost another £700 million soon as the Tory drive toward ‘privatization’ continues – are we really expected to believe that the long standing Dukinfield councillor is unaware that Labour were going to fund the NHS much less than the coalition?

Not wanting to drop the NHS ‘privatisation’ subject, he then brought up situation at Hitchingbrooke General Hospital (a NHS Trust that had been delegated to a private company) and how the project failed.

However, what he conveniently left out was the fact that before the hospital was transferred into private hands, Hinchingbrooke Hospital, in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, had debts of £40 million and was described as failing to care adequately for patients.

It must have also slipped the Labour councillors mind that it was in fact Labour’s Health Secretary, who is now the Shadow Health Secretary; who was responsible for the privatising of the only NHS hospital in England!

Go on councillor, deny it! - Hinchingbrooke hospital - the only NHS hospital to be privatised, and it was orchestrated by the Labour party!

I can only assume that councillor Taylor has so little regard for the intelligence of Tameside’s voters that he constantly spouts facts that can be undone in minutes by any seven year old with an average understanding of browsing the internet.

Just to remind him, here’s the timeline of how the hospital was put up for tender:

July 2007 – The Department of Health, under Labour, gives the Strategic Health Authority approval to examine different options, including franchises.

July 2009 – Department of Health approves the business case for an open competitive tender for a franchise.

October 2009 – Open competitive tender announced and 11 organisations submit bids, six are selected to move to the next stage. Only one was NHS-only: Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge. Circle say there was no mention of a preferred provider at any point in the tender.

February 2010 - Addenbrooke’s pull out of the bidding process.

March 2010 – A shortlist for the franchise announced: Serco, Ramsay and Circle. Serco’s bid did include a partnership with Peterborough NHS Trust.

(May 2010 – General Election in which Labour leaves office)

August 2010: The shortlist narrowed to two: Serco and Circle.

November 2010 – Circle announced as preferred bidder.

November 2011 – Contract signed with Circle, which began work in February 2012.

It’s a matter of public record that the tender was an open competitive process, and it was clear by the end of 2009 that Hinchingbrooke would, in fact be run by a private company.

So, in summary, Labour started the tender process to privatise the hospital and the Tories/LibDem coalition completed it.

This situation is typical of the two-faced Labour party stance where they agree to a policy in principle, but jump around kicking and screaming when the coalition implement it.

So, in whose hands will the NHS be safe, councillor?