THE Liberal Democrats are gloating of victory over the Tories in the great NHS U-turn – but, in truth, we are all losers from this fiasco.
This week, David Cameron accepted the key recommendations of the “listening” review he was forced to set up, when anger over his proposed revolution went nuclear.
Happily, it means the absurdity of handing £60bn of taxpayers’ cash to inexperienced groups of GPs to buy care – meeting behind closed doors – has been abandoned.
Ditto, the most dangerous part of the legislation – the attempt to let the free-market loose, allowing private firms to grab profitable bits of health service work and break up the networks of care that make the NHS successful.
What’s left is further evolution of Labour’s policy of gradually opening up the NHS to more competition. That may not be to your taste – but it is a vast improvement.
Now, the Lib Dems can claim, with some justification, that the prime minister only called a halt to his free-market revolution when Nick Clegg, their leader, dug his heels in.
And yet... health professionals report that staff are demoralised and many have left – including from the primary care trusts (PCTs) that will be scrapped.
Mr Cameron sneers, ignorantly, at these “bureaucrats”, but a well-run NHS requires skilled managers. Some may have to be rehired, at extra cost – to staff the “son of PCTs” now planned.
Furthermore, the hastily rewritten Bill creates fresh “bureaucrats” – in clinical senates, health and well-being boards and citizens’ panels. You couldn’t make it up!
Meanwhile, the aborted revolution has forced PCTs to make painful decisions to balance their books before they disappear – just as £20bn of “efficiencies” are demanded across the NHS.
There has been a dramatic rise in patients waiting longer for vital health tests – although not in this region. Expect many more worrying stories in the months to come.
That’s the cost to patients, but there is also a cost to Mr Cameron, who spent five years trying to kill that deadly soundbite “you can’t trust the Tories on the NHS” – only to underline it, in bold type.
Moreover, the original Bill at least had some ideological coherence, for those who believe the rigour of cut-throat market forces will drive down costs.
Now, we have a Health Secretary who insists the NHS is facing a cash crisis – a £230bn bill by 2030 – and a Bill that will change virtually nothing.
And the gloating Mr Clegg? Sorry, his conversion came far too late and only after great damage was inflicted on the NHS.
Yes, I think fiasco sums it up.
TONY Blair did not exactly grab a knife and plunge it into Ed Miliband’s back yesterday – but his interview in The Sun came fairly close.
The former prime minister urged him to back private firms running the NHS and schools, telling his favourite tabloid: “These were things we started.”
Just days after David Miliband’s “victoryspeech- that never-was” was mysteriously leaked, it will be seen – rightly or wrongly – as evidence of a Blairite plot to undermine Mr Miliband.
Luckily, Mr Blair clarified his position, saying: “I am happy to give him my full support.
I always will do...”
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