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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.

Hundreds of NHS leaders get Xmas ‘sack’ – Public Service

There will be a leadership vacuum in the NHS after hundreds of senior staff in Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) were sent a letter asking for their immediate resignation before 31 December, the Labour party has said.

Although the Health and Social Care Bill is still going through approval, many of the changes detailed in it have already begun to happen. That’s why heads of the PCTs, which are to be abolished, have been told they must sign and return letters of resignation by the end of the year.

The shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said: “Andrew Lansley looks increasingly like a man on a kamikaze mission to destabilise the NHS. Not only has he chosen the worst possible moment to re-organise the NHS, he now removes the very people who were crucial to holding things together.”

He went on: “By combining the financial challenge with the biggest-ever reorganisation, the government has created the conditions for a perfect storm that threatens to engulf the NHS in 2012. The government is steering the NHS towards the rocks and, unbelievably, is now busy throwing captain and crew overboard.

“This is no way to treat people and no way to run an NHS. It threatens to plunge the NHS into a vacuum just when it most needs experience, grip and focus. And it is arrogance in the extreme and an affront to democracy to dismantle the NHS in this way before Parliament has given its approval.

Other news:

UK Uncut vindicated? Commons report backs protest group

Allegations about tax avoidance in the highest echelons of the corporate world have been vindicated in a Commons report.

The public accounts committee (PAC) substantiated claims from UK Uncut, which campaigns against corporate tax avoidance, and suggested there are £25 billion of outstanding tax issues with big companies which Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has failed to deal with.

“This report is a damning indictment of HMRC and the way its senior officials handle tax disputes with large corporations,” PAC chair Margaret Hodge said.

“We uncovered both specific and systemic failures which must be addressed.”

The £25 billion bill alluded to in the report is bigger than the entire UK deficit in 2002 and only slightly below the £30 billion level in 2006.

The sum is equivalent to £1,000 for every British family or a cut of 6p from the basic rate of income tax.

Companies such as Vodafone have vociferously denied the figures about outstanding tax made by groups like UK Uncut, but the Commons committee used evidence from a whistleblower and a private eye to reach similar conclusions.

One deal which allegedly let Goldman Sachs off the hook for £20 million would not have been made public without the intervention of the whistleblower, MPs said.

“It is extremely disappointing that senior HMRC officials were not prepared to cooperate with our inquiry in a spirit of openness. We accept that there is a need for confidentiality to protect individual taxpayers, but this must not be used as a cloak to protect the department from scrutiny,” Ms Hodge added.

Super-rich dodge stamp duty while families pay tens of thousands | This is Money

The super-rich are costing the taxpayer up to £1billion a year by exploiting a legal loophole which allows them to avoid paying stamp duty when selling their exclusive homes – meanwhile, ordinary families are paying tens of thousands of pounds simply to move home.

The tax dodge involves transferring ownership of a property to an off-shore company so when it comes to be sold the buyer purchases the company as a whole assuming de-facto ownership of the property.

This means that while a family buying a home costing £400,000 would pay £12,000 to the Government, a multi-millionaire buying a luxury pad could pay nothing.
Tax dodge: All the homes on London’s exclusive Cornwall Terrace have been transferred into offshore companies

Tax dodge: All the homes on London’s exclusive Cornwall Terrace have been transferred into offshore companies

Because the deal is classed as a corporate transaction as opposed to a property sale there are no stamp duty obligations involved. The extent of the avoidance was revealed in a Times report.

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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.

Do you realise that Cameron objected to EU attempts to impose a transaction tax on big finance? Unfairly protecting bankers yet again is what the spat between Inger-lander Cameron and the EU is about.

Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham claims that the health ‘reforms’ are an affront to democracy and that there is no mandate to change the NHS.

“With all eyes on Europe, a constitutional mess closer to home is going largely ignored. Last week, the Government’s Health and Social Care Bill, one of Whitheall’s longest-running farces, hit a new low. Coalition peers trooped obediently through the lobbies on Wednesday to defy the Information Commissioner. He had ruled that the Department of Health should publish its risk register to help to inform their Lordships’ consideration of the Bill and shed light on the risks of reorganising the NHS at this time of unprecedented financial pressure.

Instead, Tory and Lib Dem peers backed the Government’s fight to keep it secret, thereby denying the wider public the chance to learn about the risks its government is running with the NHS. Outrageous – but entirely in keeping with the way the coalition has handled this most important of Bills.”

David Mitchell: I want to talk to you about the NHS. And its IT system. Wait, come back… | Comment is free | The Observer

[A total waste of time article saying nothing.]

 

UK Uncut

Philip Green

Philip Greed is a multi-billionaire businessman, who runs some of the biggest names on British high streets. His retail empire includes brands such as Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge and British Home Stores.

Philip Green is not a non-dom. He lives in the UK. He works in the UK. He pays tax on his salary in the UK. All seems to be in order. Until you realise that Philip Green does not actually own any of the Arcadia group that he spends every day running. Instead, it is in the name of his wife who has not done a single day’s work for the company. Mrs Green lives in Monaco, where she pays not a penny of income tax.

In 2005 Philip Green awarded himself £1.2bn, the biggest paycheck in British corporate history. But this dividend payout was channeled through a network of offshore accounts, via tax havens in Jersey and eventually to Green’s wife’s Monaco bank account. The dodge saved Green, and cost the tax payer, close to £300m. This tax arrangement remains in place. Any time it takes his fancy, Green can pay himself huge sums of money without having to pay any tax.

Before the election, the Lib Dems liked to talk tough on tax avoiders. But as soon as they entered the coalition, this pre-election bluster became just another inconvenient promise they quietly forgot. In August David Cameron appointed the country’s most notorious serial-tax avoider to advise the government on how best to slash public spending. Not a single Lib Dem minister uttered a word of complaint. A Guardian editorial denounced this as “shameful”.

Philip Green’s £285m tax dodge could pay for:

  • The full, hiked up £9,000 fees for almost 32,000 students
  • Pay the salaries of 20,000 NHS nurses

And if that’s not reason enough to take action against Sir Philip, it is worth noting that he has built his £5bn fortune on the back of sweatshop labour, using Mauritius sweatshops where Sri Lankans, Indians and Bangladeshis toil 12 hours a day, six days a week, for minimal pay.

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The main NHS news story today is that Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is due to announce a 60-point review of NHS performance. Lansley is expected to announce that surveys will concentrate on patients’ experience. The reviews are getting spun as imposing tough new targets on the NHS demanding improvements. It raises two issues.

Firstly, it appears very much like a top-down organisation of the NHS and is inconsistent with Lansley’s acknowledged aim to distance himself and the government from responsibility for providing and overseeing the NHS.

Secondly, following yesterday’s big news item concerning allowing private companies access to patient databases and access to drugs before they are licensed it suggests that the Con-Dem Coalition are attempting to dominate the NHS news agenda.

Pulse reports that even supportive GPs are leaving CCGs (Clinical Commissioning Groups) because of the roles’ excessive demands.

How cuts will make Britain more unfair | The wrong cure | False Economy

How cuts will make Britain more unfair

The government says that its cuts programme is not just unavoidable, but also fair and progressive. Is this true?

You can argue about the meaning of fair, but progressive has a definition. If what the government is doing is progressive it would take from the rich and give to the poor (or at least hit them much less than the rich).

Independent experts say the cuts are not progressive.

Let’s first look at the changes in tax and benefits, and then at the impact of cuts in services.

Tax and benefits

Whether changes in tax and benefits are progressive is relatively easy to measure as these are flows of cash.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies is well respected as an independent analyst. It says that the government’s claim that the tax and benefit changes in the budget and spending review are progressive is wrong.

This graph is from their analysis of George Osborne’s first budget:

June 2010 Budget: Effect of tax and benefit reforms by income decile

It shows the biggest losers are the poorest 10 per cent of families with children.

The IFS also had this to say about October’s spending review:

Our analysis (of the budget) shows that … the impact of all tax and benefit measures yet to come reduces the incomes of lower income households by more than that of higher income households, with the notable exception of the richest 2% of the population who are the hardest hit. Therefore the tax and benefit changes are regressive rather than progressive across most of the income distribution. And when we add in the new measures announced yesterday this finding is, unsurprisingly, reinforced. So our analysis continues to show that, with the notable exception of the richest 2%, the tax and benefit components of the fiscal consolidation are, overall, being implemented in a regressive way.

This is the IFS analysis of all government policies on tax and benefit by 2015. The poorest lose the most. It is only the impact of the previous government’s tax increases for the wealthy that make the top ten per cent bigger losers than some of those who are poorer.

Impact by 2015-15 of government policies

Spending cuts

Working out the impact of the cuts in spending on services is harder. Some parts of public spending benefit all of us – such as many environmental protection measures.

But other parts of public spending do benefit some people more than others. To give a simple example the richer you are, the less likely that you use the bus.

Researchers for the TUC trawled official statistics to gather information about how different income groups benefit from public spending. With these figures, and by assuming that everyone benefits equally from spending like environmental protection and defence, they were able to work out whether the cuts were progressive.

This chart shows the value of the services lost as a proportion of household income.

Value of services lost by percentage of household income

Again the impact of the cuts is much harder on the poor and those in the middle than it is on the rich. The poorest ten per cent suffer 15 times more than the richest.

The impact on women

The Womens’ Budget Group is a group of independent experts who have been working with the Treasury to analyse the effect of economic policies on women.

This is what they said about the impact of the Spending Review:

  • Lone parents and single pensioners – most of whom are women – will suffer the greatest reduction in their living standards to public service cuts. Lone parents will lose services worth 18.5% and female singles pensioners services worth 12% of their incomes.
  • Overall single women will lose services worth 60% more than single men as proportions of their incomes, and nearly three times the amount lost by couples.
  • The cuts will lead to hundreds of thousands of women losing their job. 53% of the jobs in the public sector services that have not been protected from the cuts are held by women. The pay and conditions of all public sectors workers, 65% of whom are women, are likely to deteriorate.
  • Cuts in welfare spending fall disproportionately on women’s finances. Child benefit is paid almost 100% to women; while 53% of housing benefit claimants are single women. Both benefits have been cut significantly in real terms and eligibility has been tightened.

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.

BBC News – New NHS goals are to centre on patients’ experiences

Patient surveys are to be at the centre of new goals to measure the quality of care received in the NHS in England.

Speaking at a London hospital, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley will call for focus on what matters most to patients.

The latest NHS “Outcomes Framework” stresses surveys of patients, including children, and bereaved relations.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Lansley said patients would be asked: “Was the service and experience you had good or not?”

Of bereaved relatives he said: “We’ll be… asking them, after a suitable passage of time, what was their loved one’s experience of care and how well were they looked after towards the end of life.”

He added: “[We will] ask children about their experience. So five to 16-year-olds would be part of this survey, with their parents, so for the first time we’ll be measuring as part of the outcomes, the children’s experience of their care.”

NHS Hospitals To Get New Goals To Improve Care And Save Over 20,000 Lives A Year | Politics | Sky News

NHS hospitals are to be measured against 60 new benchmark targets with the aim of saving more than 20,000 lives a year.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has said doctors and hospitals will be judged on the quality of care patients receive, rather than the speed they are treated at, in an attempt to restore faith in the system.

The NHS outcomes framework includes a focus on improving cancer survival and a zero-tolerance approach to hospital-acquired infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile.
…[yawn]

Tough new goals for NHS – UK – ITN.co.uk

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley will impose tough new targets on the health service on Wednesday, telling hospitals they must improve patient outcomes.

The Government is producing a 60-step plan called the NHS Outcomes Framework which will focus on improving cancer survival rates and ridding the health service of hospital-acquired infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile.

The plan is also designed to improve services for women and families, ensuring better maternity facilities and increasing the number of people who can access an NHS dentist.
… [yawn]

Announced by Lansley to the Torygraph: Health reforms: sixty-step plan to restore faith in the NHS – Telegraph

GPs quit CCG roles as commissioning enthusiasts lose heart – Pulse

Exclusive GP commissioning leaders are quitting the boards of clinical commissioning groups amid concerns that even enthusiasts for the NHS reforms are being ground down by excessive workload and frustration at bureaucracy.

A Pulse investigation covering 50 PCTs found 15 CCG board members have stepped down since April. Among those who resigned from board roles were CCG chairs and commissioning enthusiasts who found it impossible to juggle commissioning with their clinical work.

Board members have stepped down in Fareham and Gosport, Southampton, Wiltshire, Coventry and Warwickshire and Dorset.

Dr Patrick Craig-McFeely, a GP in Salisbury, resigned as chair of Sarum NHS Alliance commissioning group and stepped down from the CCG board last month. Dr Craig-McFeely, who was previously heavily involved in practice-based commissioning, said the experience had had a major impact on his professional and personal life.

‘It was taking over my family life and hitting the care I felt I could provide to my patients. It seemed to be getting ever worse,’ Dr Craig-McFeely said.

‘When commissioning was announced it sounded like GPs would be able to do what they thought was right. But it has shifted to us being accountable here and accountable there and a whole lot of management speak. You never seem to be making any progress.’

The time pressures on CCG chairs have also led to one of the country’s most prominent advocates of GP commissioning standing down. Dr Johnny Marshall, chair of the National Association of Primary Care, quit as chair of the United Commissioning LLP, soon to become a CCG in Buckinghamshire, after he found it impossible to devote enough time to the role alongside his other commitments.

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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.

Campaigners win delay to controversial NHS changes | This is Devon

A controversial “part privatisation” of some back office NHS functions has been put on hold after it provoked an uproar from staff.

The proposal to hand over administrative duties for the Westcountry’s family health services to a 50-50 Government and private sector partnership had enraged unions and family doctors.

After a series of meetings, the primary care trusts (PCT) , which had hoped to sign off the transfer this month, have postponed until January after conceding some issues “would benefit from greater discussion”.

Karen Williams, an organiser for the trade union Unison in Devon, welcomed the news.

“Our members are very pleased that they have been given some breathing room on this,” she said.

“While it is not a long period of time and I don’t think people will exactly be breathing a sigh of relief, members will feel that they have been paid attention to in terms of their concerns.”

Ms Williams said the union had concerns over individuals’ employment terms, as well as some larger questions about the manner of the transfer.

Under the agreement, certain administrative tasks will be transferred to the NHS Shared Business Services (SBS), a partnership between the Government and private firm Steria.

GPs in Devon and Cornwall have already voiced misgivings about SBS since the group took over invoice processing which many practices complain has resulted in late payment and bills being rejected for spurious reasons.

Former Health Minister and Exeter MP Ben Bradshaw has spoken out against the latest transfer to SBS, calling it “part-privatisation.”

Whistleblowers being ignored, RCN survey finds | News | Nursing Times

No action is taken in almost half of cases where nurses are whistleblowers about poor NHS care, according to a survey.

The poll of more than 3,000 nurses for the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) found nothing was done when fears were raised about issues including patient safety and too few staff on duty.

More than a third of nurses (34%) said they have been discouraged or told directly not to report their concerns about quality of care. Some 73% said managers had told them not to speak up, while 24% said work colleagues had said it was a bad idea.

The RCN said the results suggest pressure on staff is intensifying – in 2009, just 21% of nurses said they had been discouraged or told not to speak out.

The survey follows heavy criticism of nursing care in a series of reports from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the Patients Association.

It found that more than 80% of nurses had raised concerns with employers about issues relating to NHS wards. Yet 84% admitted they worried about being victimised or expected a negative effect on their career from whistleblowing. Of those who reported concerns, 38% had filled in incident forms (an official record regarding threat to patient safety), while 72% had told their line manager. Overall, just 20% of nurses said their employer took immediate action (down from 29% in the 2009 survey), while 48% said no action was ever taken (compared with 35% previously).

UK Uncut

Philip Green

Philip Green is a multi-billionaire businessman, who runs some of the biggest names on British high streets. His retail empire includes brands such as Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge and British Home Stores.

Philip Green is not a non-dom. He lives in the UK. He works in the UK. He pays tax on his salary in the UK. All seems to be in order. Until you realise that Philip Green does not actually own any of the Arcadia group that he spends every day running. Instead, it is in the name of his wife who has not done a single day’s work for the company. Mrs Green lives in Monaco, where she pays not a penny of income tax.

In 2005 Philip Green awarded himself £1.2bn, the biggest paycheck in British corporate history. But this dividend payout was channeled through a network of offshore accounts, via tax havens in Jersey and eventually to Green’s wife’s Monaco bank account. The dodge saved Green, and cost the tax payer, close to £300m. This tax arrangement remains in place. Any time it takes his fancy, Green can pay himself huge sums of money without having to pay any tax.

Before the election, the Lib Dems liked to talk tough on tax avoiders. But as soon as they entered the coalition, this pre-election bluster became just another inconvenient promise they quietly forgot. In August David Cameron appointed the country’s most notorious serial-tax avoider to advise the government on how best to slash public spending. Not a single Lib Dem minister uttered a word of complaint. A Guardian editorial denounced this as “shameful”.

Philip Green’s £285m tax dodge could pay for:

  • The full, hiked up £9,000 fees for almost 32,000 students
  • Pay the salaries of 20,000 NHS nurses

And if that’s not reason enough to take action against Sir Philip, it is worth noting that he has built his £5bn fortune on the back of sweatshop labour, using Mauritius sweatshops where Sri Lankans, Indians and Bangladeshis toil 12 hours a day, six days a week, for minimal pay.

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Public sector day of action on strikes yesterday.

Health workers expect the Con-Dem coalition governments health changes to increase inequalities and reduce the standard of service.

NHS workers will see any pay rises capped at 1% for two years.

There is an alternative: The case against cuts in public spending – PCS

 Tax justice

Addressing the ‘tax gap’ is a vital part of tackling the deficit. Figures produced for PCS by the Tax Justice Network show that £25 billion is lost annually in tax avoidance and a further £70 billion in tax evasion by large companies and wealthy individuals.

An additional £26 billion is going uncollected. Therefore PCS estimates the total annual tax gap at over £120 billion (more than three-quarters of the annual deficit!). It is not just PCS calculating this; leaked Treasury documents in 2006 estimated the tax gap at between £97 and £150 billion.

A comparison between levels of benefit fraud and the tax gap
If we compare the PCS estimate of the tax gap with the DWP estimate of benefit fraud, we can see that benefit fraud is less than 1% of the total lost in the tax gap (see diagram opposite).

Employing more staff at HM Revenue & Customs would enable more tax to be collected, more investigations to take place and evasion reduced. Compliance officers in HMRC bring in over £658,000 in revenue per employee.

If the modest Robin Hood tax – a 0.05% tax on global financial transactions – was applied to UK financial institutions it would raise an estimated £20-30bn per year. This alone would reduce the annual deficit by between 12.5% and 20%.

Closing the tax gap, as part of overall economic strategy, would negate the need for devastating cuts – before even considering tax rises.

Our personal tax system is currently highly regressive. The poorest fifth of the population pay 39.9% of their income in tax, while the wealthiest fifth pays only 35.1%. We need tax justice in personal taxation – which would mean higher income tax rates for the richest and cutting regressive taxes like VAT and council tax.


Cut the real waste

While it is not necessary to cut a penny in public expenditure due to the ‘deficit crisis’, there are of course areas of public spending which could be redirected to meet social needs.

In the civil and public services, we know there are massive areas of waste – like the £1.8 billion the government spent on private sector consultants last year. The government could get better advice and ideas by engaging with its own staff and their trade unions.

There is also the waste of the government having 230 separate pay bargaining units, when we could have just one national pay bargaining structure.

There are also two other large areas where government costs could be cut.

Trident

The current Trident system costs the UK around £1.5 billion every year.

A private paper prepared for Nick Clegg (in 2009, when in opposition) estimated the total costs of Trident renewal amounting to between £94.7bn and £104.2bn over the lifetime of the system, estimated at 30 years. This equates to £3.3bn per year.

At the time Nick Clegg (now Deputy Prime Minister) said: “Given that we need to ask ourselves big questions about what our priorities are, we have arrived at the view that a like-forlike Trident replacement is not the right thing to do.”

The 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto committed the Party to: “Saying no to the like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system, which could cost £100 billion.”

PCS policy is to oppose the renewal of Trident and invest the money saved in public services, whilst safeguarding Ministry of Defence staff jobs.

War in Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan is currently costing £2.6 billion per year. The war is both unwinnable and is making the world less safe. More important than the financial cost are the countless Afghan and British lives that are being lost in this conflict.


The PCS alternative…

  • There is no need for cuts to public services or further privatisations
  • Creating jobs will boost the economy and cut the deficit. Cutting jobs will damage the economy and increase the deficit
  • We should invest in areas such as housing, renewable energy and public transport
  • The UK debt is lower than other major economies
  • There is a £120 billion tax gap of evaded, avoided and uncollected tax
  • The UK holds £850 billion in banking assets from the bailout – this is more than the national debt
  • We could free up billions by not renewing Trident
  • End the use of consultants

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.

Public services union warns of more industrial action over pensions | Society | guardian.co.uk

Amid a row over the impact of the national 24-hour strike, Mark Serwotka says government needs to make further concessions

A union leader has warned that the “ball is in now in the government court” over public sector pensions and warned that further industrial action would take place if ministers failed to make further concessions.

The coalition government has said that an improved offer tabled on 2 November could be withdrawn if negotiations are not concluded by the end of the year.

Mark Serwokta, the leader of the Public and Commercial Services union, said public sector unions who took strike action on Wednesday had set themselves an earlier deadline of 15 December to decide their next move if the government did not shift its position.

Serwotka hit back at a claim by David Cameron that the mass walkout by 29 different unions across local government, health, the civil service and education had been a “damp squib”.

He said the day was “an outstanding success”, adding: “We haven’t gone on strike to have a strike, we have done it to win concessions on pensions and, in that sense, it’s the government’s move now. We hope they want to talk but, if they don’t, we have to plan for more action. The ball is very much in the government’s court. Two million people have said no to their proposals. They now need to make fresh proposals.”

A spokesperson for the Cabinet Office challenged TUC claims that up to 2 million people took action: “This figure is wrong. The figures we have show turnout was much lower than these claims and significantly less than the unions predicted. In health, civil service and local government there were approximately 900,000 people on strike. We do not have final figures for teachers.”

Disagreement between the two sides was not restricted to the pension deal or the turnout. It also rested on the nature of talks that have taken place since the last deal was tabled, with ministers insisting that talks for each pension scheme have been ongoing, while unions say discussions have either stalled or proved insubstantive.

This strike could start to turn the tide of a generation | Seumas Milne | Comment is free | The Guardian

It’s not just the scale of the walkout but the breadth that sets it apart: the ‘big society’, but not as Cameron meant it

It was the wrong time to call a strike. Industrial action would inflict “huge damage” on the economy. It would make no difference. Public sector workers wouldn’t turn out and public opinion would be against them. Downing Street was said to be “privately delighted” the unions had “fallen into their trap”.

The campaign against today’s day of action has been ramped up for weeks, and in recent days has verged on the hysterical. The Mail claimed the street cleaners and care workers striking to defend their pensions were holding the country to “ransom”, led by “monsters”, while Rupert Murdoch’s Sun called them “reckless” and “selfish”.

Michael Gove and David Cameron reached for the spirit of the 1980s, the education secretary damning strike leaders as “hardliners itching for a fight”, and the prime minister condemning the walkouts as the “height of irresponsibility”, while also insisting on the day they had been a “damp squib”.

But up to two million public employees, from teachers and nurses to dinner ladies, ignored them and staged Britain’s biggest strike for more than 30 years. The absurd government rhetoric about gold-plated public pensions – 50% get £5,600 or less – clearly backfired.

It’s not just the scale of the strike, though, but its breadth, from headteachers to school cleaners in every part of the country, that has set it apart. Most of those taking action were women, and the majority had never been on strike before. This has been the “big society” in action, but not as Cameron meant it.

And despite the best efforts of ministers and media, it has attracted strong public sympathy. The balance of opinion has varied depending on the question, but a BBC ComRes poll last week found 61% agreeing that public service workers were “justified in going on strike over changes to their pensions”.

Of course that might well change if the dispute and service disruption drags on. But the day’s mass walkouts should help bury the toxic political legacy of the winter of discontent – that large-scale public sector strikes can never win public support and are terminal for any politician that doesn’t denounce and face them down.

The Tory leadership is unmistakably locked into that Thatcher-era mindset. Not only did George Osborne’s autumn statement this week respond to the failure of his austerity programme by piling on more of the same for years to come, it was also the most nakedly class budget since Nigel Lawson hacked a third off the tax rate for the rich in 1988.

Any claim that “we’re all in this together” can now only be an object of ridicule after Osborne coolly slashed child tax credit for the low paid, propelling 100,000 more children into poverty, to fund new bypasses and lower fuel duty.

 

NHS services hit as thousands join strikes | GPonline.com

Hundreds of thousands of NHS staff are estimated to have taken part in strikes on Wednesday in protest at cuts to public sector pensions.

The strikes forced NHS services in parts of the UK to cancel operations and appointments.

Health union Unison said 400,000 NHS staff took part in industrial action across the UK – close to half the total NHS workforce.

The DoH estimate of NHS staff taking part was far lower, however. A spokeswoman said 79,000 staff – equivalent to 14% of staff in NHS trusts, foundation trusts, ambulance services and NHS Direct – did not go to work on 30 November.

Speaking in parliament on the ‘day of action’ prime minister David Cameron dismissed the strikes as a ‘damp squib’.

But Dr Ron Singer, chairman of the Medical Practitioners’ Union, a branch of public sector union Unite, said: ‘If that’s a damp squib, I hope David Cameron never witnesses a firework display by the public sector.

‘It was a fantastic show of support. To walk with people of all ages and from all backgrounds – nothing like this has happened in 30 years.’

‘Nightmare’ NHS reforms will worsen health inequalities – IFAonline

Public health experts fear the government’s plans to reform public health could be a “nightmare” that will make it harder to respond to emergencies and increase health inequalities.

They widely criticised the proposed NHS reforms and suggested the new service would be more fragmented than at present.

The vast majority also rejected one of the government’s key reasons for implementing the Bill, improving care commissioning.

These views were supported by the British Medical Association (BMA) which said the plans could cause problems when planning major events such as the next year’s London Olympics.

A survey of nearly 1,000 public health specialists conducted by the UK Faculty of Public Health (FPH) about the Health and Social Care Bill found that almost three-quarters (71%) of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that reforms would create a safer and more effective response to public health emergencies.

Even more (81%) disagreed or strongly disagreed that inequalities in healthcare access would fall, while 83% disagreed or strongly disagreed that the NHS would see less bureaucracy.

A similar number (79%) thought the reforms would lead to the fragmentation of the public health discipline with 50% strongly agreeing.

And three quarters (76%) disagreed or strongly disagreed that the reforms would lead to improved healthcare commissioning, one of the Department of Health’s central reasons for introducing the legislation.

The FPH said the research produced a clear message that there is ‘significant concern about public health’s future – for both the specialty itself and for the future health and wellbeing of the public’.

‘Words such as “chaos” and “nightmare” were used to describe the current and anticipated situation in the NHS and public health systems,’ it added.

The BMA noted that the findings add further weight to calls for the Health and Social Care Bill to be withdrawn.

Nursing in Practice – Public sector pay rises capped at 1% for two years

NHS workers will see any pay rises capped at 1% for two years as they prepare to bear the brunt of the UK’s shaky economy.

The cap on public sector pay will kick in during 2013 – when the current pay freeze is set to end – and is likely to be below inflation, leading to a real terms pay cut.

In his Autumn Statement, George Osborne admitted the cuts were “tough” but said the government “cannot afford the 2% rise assumed by some government departments” post 2013.

The pay cap is likely to provide savings of more than £1bn by 2014-15.

While Osborne pledged his commitment to protect NHS spending, Dr Peter Carter, Chief Executive and General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), claimed he has seen no evidence to support this.

Dr Carter described the cuts as “deeply provocative” and “insensitive”.

“We have always accepted that money does need to be saved but this latest attack on pay is another hammer blow to the morale of nurses, who are already in the middle of a two year pay freeze, and who are witnessing the NHS going through unprecedented upheaval,” he said.

“It is for the independent and expert pay review body to recommend an appropriate and fair deal for frontline workers – not the Government.”

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Why cuts are the wrong cure from False Economy on Vimeo.

Growing waiting lists force the Con-Dem scum government to introduce waiting list targets.

Labour pledges to repeal NHS bill when they are re-elected.

GMB union to join the 30th Novermber public sector strike on the Con-Dem government attack on pensions.

Stafford Hospital is employing army medics to keep its Accident & Emergency department open. I didn’t realise that army medics had proper qualifications.

Wake Up Call Episode 2 “A Betrayal of Trust” from Health Emergency on Vimeo.

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.

NHS waiting times force coalition U-turn on targets | Society | The Guardian

The government has been forced to abandon its opposition to NHS waiting time targets and introduce a new rule to halt the growing number of patients not being treated within the promised 18 weeks.

The U-turn is a surprise because the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, had previously criticised waiting times measures introduced by Labour to speed up patient care as “arbitrary Whitehall targets”.

But fresh evidence that waiting times are creeping up, despite David Cameron’s pledge to keep them low, has forced Lansley to change tack and impose an extra treatment directive on the NHS. He had previously castigated targets as unnecessary, likely to distort NHS staff’s clinical priorities and part of a bureaucratic “top-down” system he intended to overhaul.

It has been prompted by the disclosure that, among the 2.6m patients waiting for treatment at any time, almost 250,000 (9.4%) do not get treated within the 18 weeks guaranteed in the NHS constitution. Among these, about 20,000 patients have been left untreated for at least a year.

On Thursday Lansley warned the NHS in England that, as of next year, no more than 8% of all patients waiting at any one time would be allowed to have had their treatment delayed by 18 weeks or more.

Labour pledges to repeal NHS bill | Society | The Guardian

All provisions that turns health and social care services into a market-based system will be removed, says Andy Burnham

Labour have pledged to repeal the coalition’s controversial health and social care bill if they are re-elected, opening a new front in the debate over the NHS’s future.

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham committed the party to undoing the proposed radical reorganisation of the English NHS in a speech on Wednesday. “Labour will inherit a very different NHS – lots of damage will have already been done. And let me make it clear – if the bill in parliament goes through, we will repeal it”, he told delegates at the Royal College of Midwives’s annual conference in Brighton.

“We will return the NHS to a national system based on the principle of collaboration on which it was founded in 1948,” added Burnham, who also emphasised that, in making that pledge he was “not talking about protecting the status quo”.

His remarks are likely to be welcomed by medical organisations and campaigners against health secretary Andrew Lansley’s planned legislation, which has been approved by the House of Commons and is currently in its committee stage in the House of Lords.

But a source close to Lansley claimed Burnham, Labour’s last health secretary who returned to the shadow role in shadow cabinet reshuffle, was in effect proposing yet another restructuring of the NHS which staff would not support.

GMB Set to Join Nov. 30 Walkout over Pensions – International Business Times

The GMB has voted to join a national strike over pensions to be held later this month.

The Nov. 30 walkout has been planned in protest against public sector pension reforms. A total of 33 percent of GMB members met and voted in favour of the strike by more than 4-1.

“It is now clear that millions of workers will be protesting on 30 November at the government’s attack on jobs and pensions,” GMB National Secretary Brian Strutton said.

Although the union has voted to join the strike, Strutton said there was still time for the government to negotiate and settle the issue of public sector pensions.

Strutton added: “The government has already accepted that the original proposals were unfair and wrong. It is not too late for the government to pull back from this confrontation and scrap this attack on pensions.”

The GMB is one of the UK’s largest unions with more than 600,000 members, including NHS and local government workers from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

UCATT, the union of construction workers, also voted recently to join the strike.

The strike, originally called by the TUC, has the support of 15 unions protesting against the government’s proposal to make public sector workers pay more and work longer to earn their pensions.

Army medics drafted in to keep NHS hospital running – mirror.co.uk

ARMY medics have been drafted in to keep an NHS hospital running for the first time in Britain – because it does not have enough staff.

Stafford Hospital has been forced in to the move to keep its accident and emergency department open during the day.

But the hospital, which is currently at the centre of an inquiry into hundreds of deaths between 2005 and 2008, will still shut A&E at night due to staff shortages.

And the situation will reach crisis when the military medics pull out.

The hospital offered £100,000 salaries and £500 per extra four-hour shifts, but its poor reputation and a national shortage of NHS consultants made hiring impossible.

So two emergency consultants, used to battlefield medicine, and four senior nurses also provided by the Ministry of Defence will keep the ward open.

But Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust chiefs decided the department, which has only four of the six consultants it needs, must shut between 10pm and 8am from December 1 for three months. And the Trust admitted without “urgent action”, there “will be significant risks following withdrawal of the military support”.

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There is an alternative: The case against cuts in public spending – PCS

 Tax justice

Addressing the ‘tax gap’ is a vital part of tackling the deficit. Figures produced for PCS by the Tax Justice Network show that £25 billion is lost annually in tax avoidance and a further £70 billion in tax evasion by large companies and wealthy individuals.

An additional £26 billion is going uncollected. Therefore PCS estimates the total annual tax gap at over £120 billion (more than three-quarters of the annual deficit!). It is not just PCS calculating this; leaked Treasury documents in 2006 estimated the tax gap at between £97 and £150 billion.

A comparison between levels of benefit fraud and the tax gap
If we compare the PCS estimate of the tax gap with the DWP estimate of benefit fraud, we can see that benefit fraud is less than 1% of the total lost in the tax gap (see diagram opposite).

Employing more staff at HM Revenue & Customs would enable more tax to be collected, more investigations to take place and evasion reduced. Compliance officers in HMRC bring in over £658,000 in revenue per employee.

If the modest Robin Hood tax – a 0.05% tax on global financial transactions – was applied to UK financial institutions it would raise an estimated £20–30bn per year. This alone would reduce the annual deficit by between 12.5% and 20%.

Closing the tax gap, as part of overall economic strategy, would negate the need for devastating cuts – before even considering tax rises.

Our personal tax system is currently highly regressive. The poorest fifth of the population pay 39.9% of their income in tax, while the wealthiest fifth pays only 35.1%. We need tax justice in personal taxation – which would mean higher income tax rates for the richest and cutting regressive taxes like VAT and council tax.


Cut the real waste

While it is not necessary to cut a penny in public expenditure due to the ‘deficit crisis’, there are of course areas of public spending which could be redirected to meet social needs.

In the civil and public services, we know there are massive areas of waste – like the £1.8 billion the government spent on private sector consultants last year. The government could get better advice and ideas by engaging with its own staff and their trade unions.

There is also the waste of the government having 230 separate pay bargaining units, when we could have just one national pay bargaining structure.

There are also two other large areas where government costs could be cut.

Trident

The current Trident system costs the UK around £1.5 billion every year.

A private paper prepared for Nick Clegg (in 2009, when in opposition) estimated the total costs of Trident renewal amounting to between £94.7bn and £104.2bn over the lifetime of the system, estimated at 30 years. This equates to £3.3bn per year.

At the time Nick Clegg (now Deputy Prime Minister) said: “Given that we need to ask ourselves big questions about what our priorities are, we have arrived at the view that a like-forlike Trident replacement is not the right thing to do.”

The 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto committed the Party to: “Saying no to the like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system, which could cost £100 billion.”

PCS policy is to oppose the renewal of Trident and invest the money saved in public services, whilst safeguarding Ministry of Defence staff jobs.

War in Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan is currently costing £2.6 billion per year. The war is both unwinnable and is making the world less safe. More important than the financial cost are the countless Afghan and British lives that are being lost in this conflict.


The PCS alternative…

  • There is no need for cuts to public services or further privatisations
  • Creating jobs will boost the economy and cut the deficit. Cutting jobs will damage the economy and increase the deficit
  • We should invest in areas such as housing, renewable energy and public transport
  • The UK debt is lower than other major economies
  • There is a £120 billion tax gap of evaded, avoided and uncollected tax
  • The UK holds £850 billion in banking assets from the bailout – this is more than the national debt
  • We could free up billions by not renewing Trident
  • End the use of consultants

17.05.11: Steve Bell on David Cameron's NHS reforms speech
17.05.11: Steve Bell on David Cameron's NHS reforms speech
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Labour intends to force a vote in the Lords to suspend considering the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill until the secret report on its risks to the NHS is released by the Con-Dem scum government. The Information Commissioner has ruled that the suppressed report should be published.

I can exclusively reveal a brief summary of the suppressed report. It says “The Health and Social Care Bill is likely to destroy the NHS as a viable health care system. Having abolished the NHS, private healthcare and health insurance will develop on the American model. The plebs will be f****d but the ultra-rich who don’t use the NHS will be fine”.

The government suffered a minor defeat on the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill in the House of Lords over the issue of charities having to pay VAT. There is symbolism to this defeat i.e. further aspects can be defeated.

Cathy Warwick, chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives has criticied the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill as a ‘pointless waste’ and attacked the banks for causing the huge national debt.

UK Uncut

Student protest November 9, 2011
Student protest November 9, 2011

Philip Green is a multi-billionaire businessman, who runs some of the biggest names on British high streets. His retail empire includes brands such as Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge and British Home Stores.

Philip Green is not a non-dom. He lives in the UK. He works in the UK. He pays tax on his salary in the UK. All seems to be in order. Until you realise that Philip Green does not actually own any of the Arcadia group that he spends every day running. Instead, it is in the name of his wife who has not done a single day’s work for the company. Mrs Green lives in Monaco, where she pays not a penny of income tax.

In 2005 Philip Green awarded himself £1.2bn, the biggest paycheck in British corporate history. But this dividend payout was channeled through a network of offshore accounts, via tax havens in Jersey and eventually to Green’s wife’s Monaco bank account. The dodge saved Green, and cost the tax payer, close to £300m. This tax arrangement remains in place. Any time it takes his fancy, Green can pay himself huge sums of money without having to pay any tax.

Before the election, the Lib Dems liked to talk tough on tax avoiders. But as soon as they entered the coalition, this pre-election bluster became just another inconvenient promise they quietly forgot. In August David Cameron appointed the country’s most notorious serial-tax avoider to advise the government on how best to slash public spending. Not a single Lib Dem minister uttered a word of complaint. A Guardian editorial denounced this as “shameful”.

Philip Green’s £285m tax dodge could pay for:

* The full, hiked up £9,000 fees for almost 32,000 students
* Pay the salaries of 20,000 NHS nurses

And if that’s not reason enough to take action against Sir Philip, it is worth noting that he has built his £5bn fortune on the back of sweatshop labour, using Mauritius sweatshops where Sri Lankans, Indians and Bangladeshis toil 12 hours a day, six days a week, for minimal pay.

In the press

* Philip Green is an odd choice for efficiency tsar
* Philip Green’s tax affairs should be investigated, Lib Dem MPs urge
* Sir Philip Green under attack over personal tax affairs
* Vince Cable’s dig at Sir Philip Green’s tax status
* Sir Philip Green tax avoider gets job on the side

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.

Labour to force early vote on secret NHS report – Burnham & Thornton | The Labour Party

Labour will force a vote in the House of Lords this Wednesday to put further pressure on the Government to release its assessment of the risks to the NHS posed by its re-organisation.

Last week, the Information Commissioner ordered the release of the Department’s risk register, following pressure by Labour. The Government has fought to keep it out of the public domain and has yet to respond to the ruling.

On Wednesday, Labour will ask the House of Lords to postpone further consideration of the Health & Social Care Bill until the register has been released.

Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, has today written to Andrew Lansley requesting immediate release and said:

“Following this ruling, Andrew Lansley has nowhere left to hide. The information is vital to a full understanding of his Bill and the risks it poses to the NHS.

“I have always said that combining the biggest ever reorganisation and facing the financial challenge will expose the NHS to unacceptable risk.

“The ruling clearly said it’s in the public interest to have this information in the public domain. If he digs in and fights this, people will begin to ask what has the Health Secretary has to hide.”

Baroness Thornton, Labour’s Shadow Health Minister, speaking at the start of proceedings this afternoon, described the document’s publication as “completely pertinent” to the passage of the Bill through the Lords. Glenys Thornton called on the Government to make the document readily available before Wednesday, or Labour will force a vote in the Lords to suspend the Bill’s reading until the register is released.

Express.co.uk – Home of the Daily and Sunday Express | UK News :: Government defeated over NHS reform

The Government has suffered a defeat in the Lords over its controversial health care reforms.

The Government has suffered a defeat in the Lords over its controversial health care reforms.

Peers voted by 195 to 183, majority 12, to require the Health Secretary to report on the VAT treatment of supplies by charities providing health care services for the NHS.

It was the first defeat inflicted on ministers during the Health and Social Care Bill’s marathon 14-day report stage.

Moving the amendment to the Bill, Labour’s Lord Patel of Bradford warned of “major inequality” over irrecoverable VAT for charities providing health care services.

He said that while the NHS was able to recover VAT on certain supplies, charities were not.

And when services were transferred from the NHS to the charitable sector there was a “VAT gap” that had to be filled by charitable funds.

NHS reforms are a ‘pointless waste’ top midwife warns – Telegraph

The NHS reforms are ‘yet another pointless reorganisation’ that will ‘waste’ several billion pounds, the head of the Royal College of Midwives has warned.

Cathy Warwick, chief executive of the College, said the reforms, which will see doctors-led groups handling most of the NHS budget, were ‘risky and ill-thought through’.

Speaking at the annual conference in Brighton, Prof Warwick also attacked the banks, saying irresponsible and reckless behaviour’ had caused the huge national debt and the pensions of public sector workers, including midwives, were being sacrificed to clear the black hole.

She warned that maternity services were being stretched and midwives’ pensions were being sacrificed in order to clear the national debt ’caused by the irresponsible and reckless behaviour of the banks’.

The proportion of NHS money spent on maternity care is at its lowest point since the 1990s, Prof Warwick said, despite the country facing a major baby boom.

She added: “There is a growing disparity between the increasing demands that are made on midwives and the dwindling resources that they have at their disposal.

“This is compounded by a widening gap between the rhetoric about how maternity services should be and the reality that midwives experience on a daily basis.

“When it comes to staffing, the rhetoric is that there are more midwives than ever before.

“The reality in England is that the midwifery shortage is becoming a crisis.

“Yes the number of midwives in England has increased but by nowhere near enough to keep pace with the growth in their workload.”

On funding, she said the rhetoric was that the NHS budget has been maintained and there are no cuts to front line services.

“The reality, as you will know all too well, is that budgets are being squeezed and services are being cut.”

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Clare Gerada discusses her opposition to the Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill.

Private company Circle to run a hospital for profit.

Tax boss most wined and dined mandarin – study | Business | The Guardian

HMRC head David Hartnett attended 107 events in three years, with accountancy firms among those extending largesse

Britain’s most senior official in charge of collecting tax was named yesterday as the most wined and dined mandarin in Whitehall. According to an investigation, David Hartnett, the permanent secretary for tax at HM Revenue and Customs, accepted invitations to eat and drink 107 times over the past three years.

Prominent among those extending corporate largesse were the top accountancy firms, which are paid by big business to find ways of avoiding paying tax.

Hartnett, 59, who lists his recreations as food and wine in Who’s Who, has been accused of being too cosy with large corporations. He emerged top of the league in an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a not-for-profit body based at City University London, which collated more than 3,000 instances of hospitality given to top civil servants in the past three years.

Hartnett sat down with representatives of the “big four” accountancy firms 27 times. He ate with KPMG 10 times and went to one reception. He also accepted hospitality from PricewaterhouseCoopers seven times, Ernst & Young four times and Deloitte three. Last September he clocked up four dinners, two lunches and two breakfasts paid for by, among others, unnamed private equity chief executives, PWC and KMPG. On 17 September he had breakfast courtesy of the now merged City firms JP Morgan and Cazenove, followed by lunch the same day with accountants from BDO Stoy Hayward.

Corporate hospitality is part of Hartnett’s approach to raising tax from big firms. Rather than confronting them, he has relied on persuading them to pay their share of tax.

Protesters demand resignation of HMRC boss for colluding with tax avoiders | Left Foot Forward

Protesters are descending on Whitehall today to demand the resignation of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) boss Dave Hartnett for his role in approving deals that allow big companies to avoid billions in tax.

Activists from UK Uncut and Occupy London are protesting Hartnett’s role in approving “secret sweetheart deals” to allow feral companies to dodge billions in tax – money that could have been used to fund public services going into the pockets of the irresponsible rich.

Hartnett was made to answer MPs’ questions over the scandal, which enabled Vodafone and Goldman Sachs to effectively rob the taxpayer of £6 billion and £10 million respectively. MPs on the public accounts committee have accused Hartnett of abusing his position to “cover up his own mistakes”.

A survey in 2010 revealed Hartnett to be Britain’s most ‘wined and dined’ civil servant, treated by corporations 107 times in three years. Commentators from across the political spectrum and even Conservative MPs have also called on Hartnett to resign.

As Occupy London’s Kyshia Davey says:

“HMRC has just announced it will be going after 146,000 pensioners to demand hundreds of pounds from them following a tax code cock-up. Meanwhile, its boss is striking secret deals with opulent corporations to let them off billions of pounds in tax.

“Hartnett is fatally undermining public confidence in the UK’s tax system at a time of austerity and he must resign immediately.”

And UK Uncut’s Sam Gilbert adds:

“Whilst 25,000 rank-and-file staff at HMRC have been fired, leaving the organisation almost incapable of functioning, Hartnett has been carving out a career as the most ‘wined and dined’ civil servant in Whitehall.

“The money from Vodafone’s £6bn tax dodge alone could have prevented all of the cuts in public services over the past year.”

All in it together?

MPs hit out at Vodafone ‘tax let-off’ – UK Politics – UK – The Independent

HM Revenue & Customs officials were criticised yesterday for
allowing Vodafone to pay just £1.25bn in a tax dispute with the
Government, despite a potential tax bill of what could be as much
as £8bn.

MPs from the Commons Public Accounts Committee quizzed tax officials over deals made with Vodafone and investment bank Goldman Sachs. HMRC branded reports earlier this year that Vodafone escaped paying £6bn in tax “absurd”.

But Stephen Barclay, an MP on the committee, put the possible sum even higher. “We are looking at potentially £8bn of tax lost,” he said. “We’re looking at a company that was given five years to pay even though it was sitting on a cash pile.”

HMRC officials were also questioned about a debt deal with Goldman Sachs, which is believed could have cost the taxpayer a potential £10m.

Tax chief Dave Hartnett said an error that slashed Goldman Sachs’ debt was dealt with through a staff member’s annual appraisal. HMRC has been accused of giving Goldman a “sweetheart” deal that waived £10m of interest on a £30m bill from a failed tax avoidance scheme on bankers’ bonuses. Mr Hartnett is said to have personally sealed the agreement with a Goldman executive last November, after being advised by an official that there was a “legal impediment” to charging interest.

 

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.

New Statesman – Royal College of GPs chair attacks NHS reforms

Royal College of GPs chair attacks NHS reforms

Clare Gerada tells the New Statesman: “This reform is so large you can see it from outer space”

In this week’s magazineClare Gerada, physician and chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, talks to the New Statesman’s Sophie Elmhirst about her fears for the future of the NHS, David Cameron’s betrayal, and the ways in which patients will suffer as a result of Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s reforms:

We’ve got three big things going on at the same time – a massive reorganisation of the health service, alongside a serious financial situation, alongside the NHS having to make £20bn efficiency savings. So it is difficult to say which one is going to cause “X, Y, Z”, but certainly patients are going to experience longer waiting lists; they’ll see less choice available. Irrespective of whether the government says there is going to be more choice: there won’t be more choice.

In line with the General Practitioners’ Committee’s stance against the reform bill’s Quality Premium, Gerada is outspoken about performance-related bonuses for GPs:

In the [reform] bill, the government is suggesting that GPs be rewarded for keeping in budget. There is no problem in GPs having an incentive to practise good, evidence-based medicine. Where it becomes a step too far is where we are rewarded for keeping patients out of hospital. Because you have to trust me, you have to trust that I have stopped you from going to hospital because it is in your best interests, not because I am going to get £10, £15, £20 or whatever it is. And that begins to distort the doctor/patient relationship, which has to be fundamentally built upon trust — otherwise what’s the point of it?

Gerada speaks of being “absolutely surprised” by the reforms proposed by a coalition government she has had no discussions with:

Like others, I heard David Cameron say “no top-down reorganisation of the NHS”. I was so relieved, because I had lived through 15 reorganisations . . . [But this reform] isn’t so much putting GPs in charge of commissioning, but about dismantling the systems and the architecture of the NHS.

The NHS is our NHS. It is one of the last things that we as the people – the taxpayers – own, and by owning it our Health Secretary and our parliament is responsible for it. For £120 billion of taxpayers’ money, somebody has to be accountable to parliament. . . . It is symbolic if [Health Secretary Andrew Lansley] is no longer accountable for our national health service.

 

BBC News – Circle in deal to run Hinchingbrooke NHS hospital

A groundbreaking £1bn, 10-year deal for a private firm to run a struggling NHS hospital has been confirmed.

Circle, which is part-listed on the London Stock Exchange, is to take over Hinchingbrooke hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, from 1 February 2012.

The deal will see Circle assume the financial risks of making the hospital more efficient and paying off its debts but the hospital will stay in the NHS.

The company must maintain services but unions fear staff numbers could be cut.

Although private sector firms already operate units that treat NHS patients – such as hip replacement centres – the firm will become the first non-state provider to manage a full range of NHS district general hospital services.

Hinchingbrooke hospital is one of about 20 hospitals in England which has faced an uncertain future, and the possibility of closure, because of long-term financial problems.

It is carrying about £40m of debt and its financial status has been given a high risk red rating by the NHS. The franchise deal with Circle was developed after concerns that the hospital had become unviable, and a local campaign to maintain services.

Circle describes itself as a social enterprise because 49.9% is owned by a partnership of employees. Others see it as a private business as the rest is owned by its parent company, Circle Holdings, which is listed on the stock market.

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

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Bob Hudson discusses how Lansley and the ConDems are getting away with destroying the NHS.

NHS cuts in North Yorkshire.

Wendy Savage supports the campaign to prevent NHS Gloucestershire transferring community hospitals to a Community Interest Company.

Department of Health legal gag on an NHS whistleblower makes a mockery of the many recent DoH claims on whistleblowers.

UK Uncut

Student protest November 9, 2011
Student protest November 9, 2011

Philip Green is a multi-billionaire businessman, who runs some of the biggest names on British high streets. His retail empire includes brands such as Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge and British Home Stores.

Philip Green is not a non-dom. He lives in the UK. He works in the UK. He pays tax on his salary in the UK. All seems to be in order. Until you realise that Philip Green does not actually own any of the Arcadia group that he spends every day running. Instead, it is in the name of his wife who has not done a single day’s work for the company. Mrs Green lives in Monaco, where she pays not a penny of income tax.

In 2005 Philip Green awarded himself £1.2bn, the biggest paycheck in British corporate history. But this dividend payout was channeled through a network of offshore accounts, via tax havens in Jersey and eventually to Green’s wife’s Monaco bank account. The dodge saved Green, and cost the tax payer, close to £300m. This tax arrangement remains in place. Any time it takes his fancy, Green can pay himself huge sums of money without having to pay any tax.

Before the election, the Lib Dems liked to talk tough on tax avoiders. But as soon as they entered the coalition, this pre-election bluster became just another inconvenient promise they quietly forgot. In August David Cameron appointed the country’s most notorious serial-tax avoider to advise the government on how best to slash public spending. Not a single Lib Dem minister uttered a word of complaint. A Guardian editorial denounced this as “shameful”.

Philip Green’s £285m tax dodge could pay for:

* The full, hiked up £9,000 fees for almost 32,000 students
* Pay the salaries of 20,000 NHS nurses

And if that’s not reason enough to take action against Sir Philip, it is worth noting that he has built his £5bn fortune on the back of sweatshop labour, using Mauritius sweatshops where Sri Lankans, Indians and Bangladeshis toil 12 hours a day, six days a week, for minimal pay.

In the press

* Philip Green is an odd choice for efficiency tsar
* Philip Green’s tax affairs should be investigated, Lib Dem MPs urge
* Sir Philip Green under attack over personal tax affairs
* Vince Cable’s dig at Sir Philip Green’s tax status
* Sir Philip Green tax avoider gets job on the side

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.

Why reforms are destroying the essence of the NHS | Society | guardian.co.uk

The NHS will be unrecognisable in 10 years’ time, says Bob Hudson, if the current bill succeeds – which it looks likely to do

• Bob Hudson is a professor in the School of Applied Social Sciences, Durham University

“How is Lansley getting away with it?” I was asked recently by a senior NHS manager. Given that the NHS bill looks likely to make the statute book in the teeth of well-nigh universal opposition, it’s an interesting question. Part of the answer lies in the policy rhetoric – an attractive world of shared decision-making (“no decision about me without me”, said the white paper), with the cosy and familiar GP’s surgery said to be “the new headquarters of the NHS”. Who could possibly object?’

Opening up public services to greater patient engagement is indeed a desirable objective, but the crucial (and little debated) issue is how this is undertaken. The bill’s decentralised model of professional-patient interaction seems to offer a palace of varieties – better sources of information for patients, listening to the patients’ experience via Patient Reported Outcome Measures, recognition of the “expert patient” in the case of many long-term conditions, the roll-out of personal health budgets and – most important – the prioritisation of patient choice in the “any qualified provider” (AQP) model. It is not an agenda without virtue, but does it tell the full story?

There are other ways of increasing the stake of the public in decision-making. The most recognised route is through some form of representative democracy, and here again the government trumpets the virtue of its proposed changes – the 2010 consultation paper on democratic legitimacy, for example, boasted that “for the first time in 40 years there will be real democratic accountability and legitimacy in the NHS”.

Student protest November 9, 2011
Student protest November 9, 2011

There seems to be much on offer in this respect, too, but closer scrutiny suggests a flawed approach: health and wellbeing boards will have few formal powers and could degenerate into talking shops; clinical commissioning groups have little transparency and only vague obligations; foundation trusts in the future will be accountable only to feeble governing bodies elected by a small membership; and the new Local HealthWatch organisations will be weak and underfunded. Meanwhile the really big beasts – the NHS Commissioning Board and Monitor – will hold huge sway over local decision-making, yet be totally unaccountable to localities. Individual citizens wishing to help shape their local health services will not find it easy to gain leverage in this world.

The limitations of the “individual co-production” and “representative democracy” proposals should alert us to the real agenda for opening up the NHS – increasing diversity of supply. Although there is much rhetoric in official documents about the importance of social enterprise models and the role of the third sector, it is clear that the main alternative supply will come from the private sector. NHS staff are rightly suspicious of the denuded version of social enterprise being offered to them, consisting of guaranteed short-term contracts followed by competitive tendering against larger and better-equipped private providers. Meanwhile, the AQP agenda privileges patient choice above any other considerations (such as equity, quality and continuity) and makes the unlikely assumption that patients will readily assume the role of rational consumers. Transparency and accountability simply do not figure in this model.

NHS cuts decisions due (From York Press)

HEALTH bosses in North Yorkshire are now deciding how to deliver far-reaching savings following recommendations that bed numbers must be cut.

The loss of 200 hospital beds in York and North Yorkshire was only one of the “essential” measures needed to help the local NHS authority save £230 million by 2015, according to an independent report published in August on behalf of the region’s strategic health authority.

Professor in NHS battle | This is Gloucestershire

THE campaign to stop community hospitals leaving the NHS has been boosted by a visit from campaigner Professor Wendy Savage.

There was standing room only at public meeting in Stroud where she said they must fight to keep the NHS public.

Prof Wendy Savage, a General Medical Council Member, backed the campaign to stop NHS Gloucestershire transferring community hospitals to a Community Interest Company. The transfer is on hold following a legal challenge. Prof Savage also attacked the Government’s Health and Social Care Bill.

“What they are setting out to do is make the NHS into a market,” said Prof Savage. “If this goes through people will see the NHS being broken up into competing businesses.”

Chief executive of NHS Gloucestershire Jan Stubbings said: “If taken to its logical conclusion, the legal challenge would mean that services would be competitively tendered.”

Medicine Balls, Private Eye, Issue 1301, November 9, 2011 | drphilhammond.com

The most keenly awaited NHS employment tribunal in years has ended in secrecy, making a mockery of the government’s commitments to transparency, accountability, patient safety and the protection of whistleblowers. Gary Walker, the former chief executive of the United Lincoln Hospitals Trust (ULHT), lost his job in February 2010 after blowing the whistle on how government targets were harming patient care. The trust claims he was sacked for saying ‘fuck’ nine times over 2 years.

The tribunal was important because Walker had blown the whistle both to his SHA chief executive, Barbara Hakin – now the DoH’s Director of Commissioning – and the NHS chief executive David Nicholson. The allegation that the two most senior managers in the NHS may have played a role in the destruction of Walker’s career whilst failing to address patient harm should have been dissected under oath but the NHS legal machine ensured the claim was ‘settled’ on the eve of the tribunal.

Walker is now not able to speak about the case. Ever. Neither can any of his many witnesses who were prepared to testify about serious cases of patient harm, fiddling of figures, the bullying behaviour of the strategic health authority and a whitewash external review that only looked for bullying ‘in writing.’ Neither will any witnesses confirm or deny the existence of any gagging clause. All those who were due to testify against the trust, the SHA, the DoH, Nicholson and Hakin – and substantiate allegations of ‘third world care’ and avoidable patient harm – have been so effectively silenced at public cost that they are too scared to say how or why.

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