NHS news review

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Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat(Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

 

Apologies that the NHS news review is so late today – I’ve had network problems all day.

 

There’s a rally opposing the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS bill today at 6pm. There are many statements from union leaders. The BMA’s Consultants Committee intend to vote on a motion of no confidence in Andrew Lansley.

Awaiting a decision in the risk register hearing.The arguments proposed.

BMA: patient care compromised as consultants forced to fight ‘belligerent’ Government

 

Dr Porter, a consultant obstetric anaesthetist at the University Hospital, Coventry, said: “The tragedy is that doctors’ time and effort is being increasingly diverted away from seeking to improve patient care.”

Lauching a broadside at ministers’ plans to reform the NHS and overhaul doctors’ pensions, he said: “The Government has opened battle with doctors.”

He continued: “Consultants have been pushed into conflict by a belligerent and obstinate government, when we would far rather be planning improvements in clinical services.”

The Health and Social Care Bill was opposed, he claimed, by “almost every part of society”, while the Government had done “nothing to address” widely-held concerns.

He described proposed changes to doctors’ pensions, that are likely to result in industrial action, as a “betrayal” of the “social compact” between medics and their employers.

While Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, has repeatedly accused doctors and nurses of opposing the Bill because the Government wanted them to pay more for their pensions, Dr Porter said these were “quite separate” issues that had been “wrongly linked”.

“On both these matters we stand ready to discuss them with the Government but we find that the door to talks has been slammed in our face,” he said.

Simon Burns, the Health Minister, accused the BMA of “scaremongering from the sidelines” while doctors got on with the job at hand.

 

Letwin on NHS: It is privatisation


David Cameron and Andrew Lansley are desperate to avoid the suggestion that they are privatising the NHS.

But it seems that cabinet minister Oliver Letwin didn’t get the memo.

He said last week that putting private companies in charge of schools and hospitals would soon “become not a matter of political debate but straightforward and obvious as a way of conducting business in this country”.

Letwin has boasted about the Tory threat to the NHS before. He reportedly said in 2004 that the NHS “will not exist” within five years of a Tory government.

 

 

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