The Parliamentary Review 2014/15 Healthcare Edition
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2014 / 2015 HEALTHCARE EDITION A YEAR IN PERSPECTIVE FOREWORDS The Rt Hon George Osborne MP The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP REPRESENTATIVES NHS Tameside and Glossop East and North Hertfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group Clinical Commissioning Group Liverpool Heart and Chest Luton & Dunstable University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Hospital Foundation Trust The Royal Marsden NHS Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Foundation Trust Northamptonshire Healthcare Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust NHS Foundation Trust Bolton NHS Foundation Trust FEATURES Review of the Year Review of Parliament ©2015 WESTMINSTER PUBLICATIONS www.theparliamentaryreview.co.uk Foreword The Rt Hon George Osborne MP Chancellor of the Exchequer The UK grew faster than any other major advanced radical new apprenticeship levy on large firms. We’re economy in the world last year, and is set to do the also devolving even more powers to local areas over same again this year. Over the past 5 years we created things like planning, skills and Sunday trading rules. two million new jobs. And the deficit – now 3.7% of And to back British businesses and encourage them to GDP – is a third of what we inherited in 2010. invest we’re setting the annual investment allowance at £200,000 and cutting corporation tax to 18% by 2020 – But all that progress could be put at risk if we don’t making it the lowest in the G20. continue with the plan that is delivering for the working people of this country. The final part of the plan is to make sure work always pays, so at the Budget I announced a new national living Economic security is at the heart of that plan. It’s not wage, reforms to our welfare system and lower taxes for enough to simply eradicate the deficit – we have to working people so we move Britain to being the higher reduce our unsustainably high level of national debt. wage, lower tax, lower welfare economy we want it At the Budget I published a revised Fiscal Charter that to be. commits us to running a surplus in normal times to bear down on debt. In the autumn the House will vote on that charter and I hope it will mark the start of a new settlement for Britain’s public finances. Improving productivity – the amount that British Improving productivity is workers produce for every hour they work – is the key route to making the UK stronger and families the key route to making richer, and it’s the greatest economic challenge of our “ the UK stronger“ and families time. We’ve set out concrete steps that we’re going to take to improve the infrastructure, education and skills richer, and it’s the greatest of the UK – and to make sure that this time it’s a truly economic challenge of national recovery. Some of the biggest reforms include setting up a new roads fund to pay for the sustained our time investment our roads so badly need and introducing a FOREWORD | 1 Foreword The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP Secretary of State for Health I was delighted and humbled to be reappointed Health We must ensure that the NHS becomes a truly 7-day Secretary following the general election in May. It is a service, where patients know they will receive the same great privilege to serve the hundreds of thousands of quality of care and treatment whether they fall ill on doctors, nurses and other NHS staff working incredibly a Tuesday or a Saturday. I am delighted that David hard to provide high-quality care, and the millions of Cameron used his first major speech after the general patients and families whose lives have been changed by election to announce plans to achieve this. their dedication and expertise. The NHS is facing serious challenges. We have an Over the past 5 years, we have achieved a lot. We ageing population, increasing consumer expectations, increased spending on the NHS in real terms every and growing numbers of people who are living year in the last Parliament and, as David Cameron has with long-term health conditions such as dementia promised, we will do the same in this Parliament too. and diabetes. We know that the strength of the NHS depends on the strength of the economy, and our long-term plan will I am confident that with the increased investment we ensure the stability and growth on which the health have committed, the NHS’ own long-term plan that we service depends. are backing and, above all, the dedication and talent of frontline staff, we can rise to those challenges, and Today there are 9,400 more doctors and 7,700 more become the world’s safest, most compassionate and nurses than there were in 2010. Last year, the NHS best value health service. carried out over a million more operations than 5 years ago, and saw over six million more outpatients. And the service has embraced one of the biggest health challenges of our time, with more than 430,000 NHS staff undertaking dementia training to help them “ care for vulnerable patients. We must ensure that But there is more work to do. Over the next 5 years, the NHS becomes a truly we must transform out-of-hospital care so that older and vulnerable people get the joined-up support they “ 7-day service need at home and in their communities. 2 | FOREWORD ReviewHEALTHCARE EDITIONof the Year Jeremy Hunt’s ‘reformation moment’ a system with the confidence to be honest about failings is a system that does something to put them right.’ Adapting a phrase from the science fiction and cyberpunk novelist William Gibson, Mr Hunt went on to say: ‘The future of the NHS is already here, it is just unevenly distributed’. One eye-catching move announced in the King’s Fund speech was for Lastminute.com founder Martha Lane Fox to produce a report on how technology could shift power more easily to patients. The cross-bench peer will submit her proposals to the NHS The NHS is seeking National Information Board before the ‘intelligent transparency’ end of the year. Two months after his reappointment as health secretary in May, Jeremy Mr Hunt’s wide-ranging speech Hunt unveiled his ‘25-year vision’ for also saw an offer to senior NHS the NHS. The secretary of state made leadership that he would hold them major announcements on pay, staffing, to fewer targets in exchange for management culture and the structure greater transparency. Although one of the service during a speech at the waiting-time target has already been King’s Fund think-tank in Cavendish relaxed, it is not yet clear which other Square, London. He also set out his targets the NHS will be allowed to vision to make the people who use cease reporting on. the English NHS ‘the most powerful patients in the world’. Mr Hunt reaffirmed some already trailed announcements, such as the Mr Hunt told delegates: ‘[former printing of the price of expensive Conservative minister] Nigel Lawson drugs on the packaging so patients famously described the NHS as a can see how much they cost. The national religion. The problem with move is part of a wider push to get the religions is that when you question public to take greater responsibility for the prevailing orthodoxy, you can end their own health. up facing the Spanish Inquisition. NHS orthodoxy was that criticism should The most eye-catching measure not be made public because it would announced was his support for ‘damage morale’. We now see that changing hospital doctors’ contracts was wrong. Intelligent transparency is so they could be required to work at becoming a ‘reformation moment’ for weekends. Quoting research about the NHS as the public appreciate that worse outcomes for patients admitted reIW V E of THE YEAR | 3 THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW Highlighting best practice at weekends when fewer senior staff told to discontinue its work on safe are on duty, Mr Hunt directly attacked staffing levels by NHS England earlier the British Medical Association (BMA). in the year. NHS England, the national commissioning body for NHS services, In a question-and-answer session after said this was because the work would his speech, the health secretary was be rolled up in a larger programme asked by Labour MP for Islington South it was carrying out – although there and Finsbury Emily Thornberry whether was suspicion in some quarters that antagonising medics was a good way the intention was to try to check the to achieve the changes to the NHS he growing cost of staff in the NHS by desired. Mr Hunt replied that he had avoiding an official and binding staff/ yet to meet a doctor who opposed patient ratio. the principles of 7-day working, and that the BMA was out of touch with The secretary of state reversed its members. NHS England’s position, saying not only that the work would now be Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury Emily He said he was ‘unable to hide his carried out by the merged NHS Trust Thornberry frustration’ with the union, which had Development Authority/Monitor and walked out of pay negotiations with led by national patient safety director the Department of Health ‘without Mike Durkin but that it would be notice’ last year. He added that if an signed off by NICE, the Care Quality agreement could not be negotiated Commission’s chief inspector of by September, then new rules would hospitals Sir Mike Richards, and be imposed. Sir Robert Francis, who led the inquiry into poor care at Mid Staffordshire BMA leader Mark Porter called Hunt’s Foundation Trust.