Clive Peedell is a man for whom I have a lot of time. A founder of the NHS Action party, a consultant in Middlesborough and a member of the BMA Council, few doctors have their finger on the pulse of the NHS the way he has. He's written in the Guardian this morning, saying:
The NHS needs to be reformed to remain true to its founding principles; the question is how. International evidence suggests that increasing marketisation and privatisation of healthcare services leads to greater expenditure, greater variations in care, reduced access to services, and erosion of professional standards. On that basis, the reforms have been heading in the wrong direction for a long time, with all the major political parties supporting policies that increase the role of the private sector in the NHS.
He's right. As he goes on to note:
New Labour's own market-driven reforms laid the ground for Andrew Lansley's Health and Social Care Act, which in turn paves the way for a mixed funding system. Yet, with public and patient satisfaction in the NHS at an all-time high prior to the Lansley reforms, the case for such radical changes has not been made, let alone won.
The basic reform now needed in the NHS is the abolition of all pretence of a market, the creation of single tier authorities for regions capable of investing in quality systems and regional centres of excellence (in may area, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridge combined), and the removal of financial incentives for action, with considerably more freedom being given to professionals to concentrate on quality of care.
That's not what we're going to get, as Clive notes:
In the face of public and professional opposition to Lansley's bill, coalition MPs and peers eventually passed the legislation only after receiving reassurances from senior ministers that there would be no NHS privatisation, and a focus on integration of services rather than competition.
However, the privatisation debate has now been reignited by revelations about section 75 of the act and the associated statutory instruments(SI 257 regulations) making their way through parliament. The regulations are aimed at making competitive tendering compulsory for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), except in emergencies. At a stroke, they inject competition into the NHS and enable the market to decide how services are provided. Thus the reassurances ministers gave about clinicians and local people having control of how services are commissioned look set to be overturned. Private providers will gain rights under EU competition law, which will make it virtually impossible to stop them encroaching into the NHS market.
The NHS is being privatised, now. Inefficiency, increased costs, longer waiting lists, discrimination and a lower standard of care will inevitably follow.
As Clive notes:
Increasing marketisation and privatisation of the NHS goes against the democratic views of the overwhelming majority of the public, who don't want to see their most cherished institution dismantled and fragmented.
It is vital politicians, professional organisations, campaign groups, patient groups and the public stand together and fight for the NHS against a privatisation experiment that has been shown time and again to fail. This will require a concerted effort to counter the spin and obfuscation that surrounds NHS reform, to uncover what is really happening to our healthcare system.
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“Private providers will gain rights under EU competition law”
I have read this elsewhere as well and I do not know what law it refers to. I had thought that the problem was the General Procurement Agreement, which comes from the WTO. It is true we signed up for that as part of the EU, and not as an individual state. Is that what is meant, or is there something else I am not aware of?
Once a market is opened upo to EU competition law it has then to always be tendered from then on – at least three tenders required and basically price rules on the decision making
So those who don’t train, pay low wages, do not provide pensions and cherry pick will always win in the NHS
And that’s what’s coming
Price only rules if the specification doesn’t set sensible other criteria.
If you specify in the tender that a certain level of training is required, for example, any bid that would cut training costs will be an automatic fail.
I’m not a procurement professional, but I’ve dealt with them enough to pick up that much.
Now if you cut corners on the specs, that’s a different matter. That’s procurement done badly.
And those corners are happening
I am still not clear whether you are talking about EU law as commitment to the GPA: because if that is what is meant then it is expressly forbidden to make other conditions.
http://thosebigwords.forumcommunity.net/?t=45774951&p=347394239
And it is explicit that once a sector is opened in this way it is intended to keep it that way
I signed the 38 Degrees petition on this and wrote to my MP about it last week, Richard. But one thing we can be sure of is that when Cameron promoted Hunt to health minister he knew damned well that he had a man that he could rely on to push privatisation of the NHS to the absolute hilt. Furthermore, as we saw with Leveson, Hunt has the brass neck to say one thing and do another without hesitation: look no further than what he said to various different audiences following the Stafford inquiry report if anyone want’s evidence of that.
Add Hunt to the privatisation zealots that have populated the Department for Health and higher echelons of the NHS for years now (all due to New Labour) and we have the perfect storm. As Leys and Player’s book, The Plot Against the NHS, clearly demonstrates, this group have had a long term goal to destroy the NHS as a public body and nothing so far has deflected them from this goal. Promises made during Parliamentary debates and the passage of bills have simply been treated as temporary delays while they go away and rewrite or dream up a way around the obstacle. And politicians – most recently the ‘Saintly’ Shirley williams – have routinely had rings run around them.
So, I hope this latest attack can be overcome. But somehow I think that with Hunt there it won’t be. Rather like David Gauke and HMRC, we have the perfect combination of personnel for the development and implementation of ideology based policy.
No mention of Nicholson in this? What does he have over NHS masters and politicians to get them to back him all the time?
There must be someone else who will take over the poisoned chalice from him.
Early Day motion number 1104 proposed by Ed Milliband, originally by the green MP, to get the privatisation clause annulled by the Queen.
Get your MP to sign up to it if you do not want the mayhem Clive Peedell talks about to happen.
It’s also possible to become a member of the NHA party, which needs many more members if it is to do better than it did in Eastleigh.
But this is an amendment to UK law. Does not EU regulation override this case anyway?
No – we have to allow an extension of EU law to NHS first
This does that
And also from the 38 Degrees website, which is running a petition:
“A new fight for the future of our NHS has just begun. Jeremy Hunt is trying
to use new powers, hidden within last year’s controversial NHS laws, to
force local GPs to privatise more health services.
We know how important the NHS is to all of British society. And we know that
when private health companies move in, too often it doesn’t end well for
patients. One of the reasons so many people opposed the NHS law last year
was because we were worried it would pave the way to this kind of enforced
privatisation. Now we need to do all we can to stop that happening.
We’ve got a chance, because Jeremy Hunt is breaking specific promises given
when the NHS laws were voted through last year. If we can generate enough
public outcry – and put enough pressure on the politicians who clung to
these promises last time round – we have a decent hope of stopping them.
Sign the petition here:
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/NHS-section75 “