ConDem spin

NHS faces unexpected £500m cuts, say hospitals

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Hospital trusts say frontline services are threatened by cuts on top of anticipated £1bn fall in funding

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The NHS faces unexpected cuts of £500m that threaten frontline services, according to a body that represents hospital trusts.

Despite the government’s pledge to protect frontline services with real-terms increases in funding, Monitor, the NHS watchdog, has proposed that in 2014-15 hospitals should be paid 4% less for operations than they were the previous year.

While hospitals were braced for a cut of about £1bn in funding, the Foundation Trust Network, which represents all 160 hospital trusts in England, calculates that Monitor is now asking for another £500m in savings – roughly £3m from each trust.

Chris Hopson, chief executive of the Foundation Trust Network, said cuts to frontline services would be deeper than expected and questioned whether the NHS could invest in much needed changes to the way hospital services work, recommended by the Francis report into failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust.

He warned that hospitals were facing a “quadruple whammy” of “implementing the Francis report’s recommendations on quality such as improving staff-to-patient ratios, putting seven-day working in place, coping with increasing demand and investing in much needed change”.

“The level of efficiency savings the NHS has delivered over the last three years is unprecedented, but this level of performance cannot be sustained year on year till 2021. We need a reality check here – in the end you get what you pay for, and trusts can’t perform miracles out of thin air.”

Officials at Monitor were unrepentant, saying the forcing of hospitals to charge less for operations would free more money for clinical commissioning groups – clumps of GPs who purchase care on behalf of patients – to spend on the public.

However, Labour said it was another example of how the coalition’s reforms were silently squeezing the NHS.

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Government forcing us to open NHS to competition, say commissioners

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The government promised parliament that NHS competition would not be compulsory under their new laws. New evidence emerges today that these promises were false.

Local health bosses are saying they are legally obliged to put NHS services out to competition, despite repeated government promises to the contrary, it emerged today.

A survey in today’s Pulse magazine revealed that since April, Clinical Commissioning Groups have put 63% of contracts to provide NHS services out to tender, with a further 9% using the slightly different ‘Any Qualified Provider’ route. The contracts that have been opened up to private healthcare companies to take over include every aspect of NHS services and total billions of pounds.

And according to Pulse:

“When asked whether they had awarded contracts without putting it out to competition, many Clinical Commissioning Groups – including Cambridgeshire and Peterborough – answered: ‘This would be contrary to the section 75 regulations.’”

The revelation will re-open controversy about broken government promises on NHS privatisation.

The Section 75 regulations were made under the Health & Social Care Act in April this year. They appeared to force competition on the NHS in contravention of ministerial promises made during the stormy passage of the Act itself. At a critical juncture then health secretary Andrew Lansley wrote to the new local health bosses (Clinical Commissioning Groups) telling them that,

“I know many of you have read that you will be forced to fragment services, or put them out to tender. This is absolutely not the case. It is a fundamental principle of the Bill that you as commissioners, not the Secretary of State and not regulators – should decide when and how competition should be used to serve your patients interests.”

And he told the House of Commons,”There is absolutely nothing in the Bill that promotes or permits the transfer of NHS activities to the private sector”

Days later Tory health minister Earl Howe promised the Lords “Clinicians will be free to commission services in the way they consider best. We intend to make it clear that commissioners will have a full range of options and that they will be under no legal obligation to create new markets, particularly where competition would not be effective in driving high standards and value for patients. As I have already explained, this will be made absolutely clear through secondary legislation and supporting guidance as a result of the Bill.”

However when this secondary legislation emerged in February this year – the Section 75 regulations – it appeared to break these promises and give local health commissioners no choice but to put NHS services out to competition, as first highlighted on OurNHS openDemocracy and by Keep Our NHS Public.

A storm of protest errupted. Over 1000 health professionals wrote to the Telegraph urging for the regulations to be scrapped. Both the unions and the Royal Colleges – even those who had been muted in their opposition to the Act itself – and were up in arms at what the Association of Royal Colleges called ‘privatisation by stealth’. Over 300,000 38 Degrees members signed a petition for them to be dropped. Polly Toynbee called for the Lib Dems not to stand for any more lies on the NHS and many Lib Dem activists raised concerns.

Lib Dem health minister Norman Lamb told parliament “We are looking at this extremely seriously. Clear assurances were given in the other place during the passage of this legislation and it is important they are complied with in the regulations.”

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Privatisation will threaten Royal Mail’s six-day service, warns campaign group

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[Well of course the service will suffer, postage charges will rise, postmen and women will be sacked – that’s what businesses do to make money. Many Tory and Liberal-Democrat-Tory MPs reassure their constituencies that the opposite is true. They’re lying.

Tony Blair’s NEW Labour tried to privatise Royal Mail. Their argument was that there was a deficit in the pension fund. I never really grasped that very poor argument. Any deficit would have be due To Royal Mail or the government dipping into it as promoted by Gordon Brown. The current government argues that Royal Mail needs investment despite it apparently turning a profit. Why not invest some of that profit? ]

Competition will make it impossible for a privatised service not to cut deliveries in rural areas, says Save Our Royal Mail

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Richard Graham, the MP for Gloucester, argued that privatisation would provide the investment needed to compete against the private sector. “I don’t want to save Royal Mail because I don’t think it’s a panda or a tiger,” he said. “I want to grow Royal Mail. I want to see it become a world- beating company. It’s got 150,000 employees. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if it had 200,000 and was running postal services under that great brand all around the Commonwealth?

“It needs to be able to compete against private-sector competitors, and it can only do that effectively if it has the investment it needs to get the technology that the competitors have,” he said.

The panel clashed over how privatisation would affect value for money for consumers. Dunn said Royal Mail had historically kept prices low across the market, but expected a sharp increase after privatisation that would allow its competitors to increase their prices, too. Graham, however, predicted that the new ownership would freeze prices after last year’s rises.

Ben Harris-Quinney, chair of the right-wing thinktank Bow Group, accused the government of “rushing out” the privatisation. “Research in July showed that almost half of the country were not aware of the privatisation of Royal Mail and 65% of those surveyed were against any notion of privatisation,” he said. “There has been no campaign. This has been a Westminster-bubble discussion that hasn’t engaged with the public at all.”

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Government exposed by games over lobbying register

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http://spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/lobbying/item/5530-government-exposed-by-games-over-lobbying-register

By Tamasin Cave

The government’s so-called ‘Lobbying Bill’ has provoked a furious response from charities and unions. They are right to be up in arms. The Bill couples a fake lobbying register with a very real assault on democracy in the form of a clampdown on the ability of charities and unions to campaign.

One consequence of this unannounced swipe at charities and unions in the same Bill is that debate over the proposals for a register of lobbyists have been muted. The very real concerns people have about the influence large companies have on our government have been silenced. The fundamental weaknesses of the current proposals for a register of lobbyists have been eclipsed. The attack on charities and unions is a very useful diversion. It is as if the government planned it.

The game-playing was predictable. Despite its firm commitment to shine a light on lobbying, this government has shown no appetite to expose its dealmaking with lobbyists to public scrutiny.

A brief look at the recent history of the lobbying register exposes how little regard they have for transparency and our right to know who is bending their ear.

<snipped>

May 2010

  • The Coalition commits to tackling lobbying through the introduction of a statutory register of lobbyists.
  • More lobbying scandals hit the headlines: Liam Fox resigns over links to lobbyist; agency Bell Pottinger boasts of access to No10; and undue influence of corporations dogs NHS reforms.
  • But no action is taken for nearly two years.

January 2012

  • Senior Conservative Party figures reported as saying that election strategist and lobbyist, Lynton Crosby advised government to drop register of lobbyists from Queen’s Speech.

July 2013

  • Government has had enough and publishes its proposals for a register of lobbyists. They are worse than its previous plans. What they have proposed is a fake register. Government decides to couple this with an attack on charities and unions, which could put them at risk of prosecution and could be in breach of the right to free speech.

If these proposals weren’t so damaging they would be absurd. But what they are is a diversion from the problem sketched out above, which is that commercial lobbying is embedded in our politics.

Ninety per cent of the UK public believe that ‘the country’s government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves‘. Over half of people in the UK think that Parliament is corrupt or extremely corrupt.

The government’s answer to this is to play silly games.

 

 

 

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Bill protects lobbyists while targeting civil society

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David Miller, Professor of Sociology at University of Bath

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The government bill on lobbying currently making its way through parliament has trade unions and most of the non-government organisation (NGO) world up in arms. But they are not complaining about the provisions on lobbying – focusing instead on the “gagging” clauses in the bill.

These – which are in the second part of the bill – bring in new restrictions on the activities of any organisation spending £5,000 a year on non-party-political campaigning on broadly defined “political issues”. The law will apply to campaigning that “may” influence an election and will be in force for a whole year before elections.

As Polly Toynbee notes, if charities “trip into electoral law they must send weekly reports of all their spending during the electoral period, when any slip risks criminal charges”. Part three of the bill also brings in new onerous regulations targeting trade unions.

Meanwhile the lobbying provisions in part one, promised in the Coalition agreement of May 2010, are seriously inadequate. Remember that David Cameron pointed to lobbying as the “next big scandal waiting to happen” in early 2010. This came after mounting lobbying scandals and stories of corruption in public life under successive governments. Who can forget Labour transport minister Stephen Byers and the “cab for hire” affair?

Since then the problems of the subterranean influence of lobbying and privileged access for corporate leaders has only got worse. To name a few: Conservative Party co-treasurer Peter Cruddas resigned over the cash-for-access affair; ministerial adviser Adam Smith resigned over News Corp’s lobbying on the BSkyB bid; retired “generals for hire” offered to lobby for arms companies; MP Patrick Mercer was caught out; as were two members of the House of Lords; and details emerged of Lynton Crosby’s clients.

Bill misses targets

In response to all this, the provisions of the bill would cover only lobbyists working as consultants, rather than in-house corporate lobbyists. This already excludes around 80% of lobbyists from registration.

But the bill is even worse, in that lobbying consultancies will only have to register if they meet with ministers or permanent secretaries. Meetings with special advisers and all other civil servants don’t count and nor does any other activity.

Thus, as the lobbying consultants’ lobby group, the Association of Professional Political Consultants notes, ministers in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills had 988 meetings with lobbyists in 2012 – only two of which were with lobbying consultants. That is less than 1% of ministerial meetings, never mind the wider activities essential to lobbying and influence peddling.

It is not clear whether the gagging clauses have been put into the bill by fiendishly clever sleight of hand to distract attention from the lobbying register. Perhaps the hope is that the lobbying provisions will slip through unnoticed.

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