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?
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