INSIDE l cuts round-up pages 6-7 l White paper threat to mental health back page l TeN Good Reasons to say No to the White Issue No. 66, Autumn 2010. WHITE PAPER SPECIAL ISSUE paper page 3 White Paper would combine biggest-ever cuts with biggest-ever privatisation Special appeal Help us campaign Say NO to ConDem to save our NHS! The NHS faces its biggest-ever threat: a ‘double whammy’ of massive cuts year by year to 2014, coupled with the White Paper proposals that could wipe out all public sector rationingThe ConDem government’s boards! provision of services. White Paper ‘Liberating the The ConDem government NHS’ makes many controver- has no mandate to transform sial proposals, but at its heart the National Health Service are two key factors: the frag- into a national health market. mentation and privatisation of But if there is no public the NHS – and £20 billion of challenge, the White Paper spending cuts by 2014. could be forced quickly The scale of these “efficiency through Parliament. savings” guarantees that even Hospital staff have while it appears to give GPs everything to lose and greater control over services, nothing to gain from the the opposite is the case. proposals which could see With tight budgets and cuts tens of thousands of jobs to be made, consortia of GPs axed, and hundreds of established to spend £80 bil- thousands pushed out of the lion in commissioning budg- NHS workforce, with new ets will inevitably become little threats to their pay scales and more than rationing boards. pensions. Far from improving services Every cutback that is they will have to choose which accepted will just encourage services will be cut and which desperate employers to come sections of patients should be back for more. excluded from treatment. It really is do or die for To accept this would not be those of us who want to “liberation” for the GPs or their defend the NHS as a public patients: it’ would be a capitu- service, and who value the lation to the ConDem govern- staff who deliver services. ment. to push through proposals lined as they struggle for influ- To build a successful As the debate over the White If the NHS Alliance, which will have far-reaching ence with Mr Lansley. campaign requires resources, Paper begins to widen, it’s clear and negative consequences for Perhaps the biggest reason publicity, time and effort: and that there is a strong and grow- the Royal College patients as well as for the NHS for standing up against these until there is a broad popular ing opposition to many of its and its one million employees. plans, which could effectively campaign established with core proposals, even among of GPs and the It will also be a disaster for transform the NHS into a Na- the support of the main health the group who appear to have tens of thousands of hospital tional Health Market, with no unions, much of the work most to gain from it. BMA, along with doctors: the proposals could ef- public sector providers, is that will fall to organisations like GP magazine found fewer- fectively privatise health provi- there is absolutely no evidence London Health Emergency. than one in five of the 300 GPs the health unions sion and reduce England’s NHS that these expensive, experi- But right now, we don’t who responded to an online workforce from almost 1 mil- mental reforms – the biggest- have the resources to cope. poll believed that the changes lion to virtually zero by 2014. ever privatisation of health care We need help to keep the would improve patient experi- simply took a firm Despite these problems, at anywhere in the world – could issue in the media, and work ence or the funding of primary present the BMA is committed deliver the promised improve- with local campaigners to care services. stand against the to “engage critically” with con- ments for patients. get the message across in Twice as many (41 percent) sultations on the ConDem plan. It’s all looking like a mess meetings, protests and local feared a fresh “postcode lot- White Paper, the This is a mistake. Indeed waiting to happen. publicity. Just producing and tery,” while 71 percent expect- if the NHS Alliance, the Royal The cost of implementing distributing this newspaper ed the scrapping of PCTs and ConDems would College of GPs and the BMA, the White Paper (upwards of has cost £2000. SHAs to lead to an increase in desperate appeal for GPs not to turn their backs on the govern- along with the health unions £1.7bn) seems like a classic We urge any readers or private sector involvement in not be able to which have already declared waste of money much better supporting organisations commissioning. 60 percent of ment proposals, claiming that it would be “utterly disastrous” themselves against the propos- spent on patient care. that can do so to make a responses in a poll on the pro- carry out their als, simply took a firm stand But from the point of view donation, as large as you can White Paper National Associa- if they did not “embrace the White Paper and make it work”. against the White Paper, and of Andrew Lansley and his Tory afford, to ensure we have the tion of Primary Care website plans. marketisation and privatisation colleagues, if it resulted in de- resources to keep on fighting also opposed the government’s But of course Dr Dixon has got it the wrong way round. of health care that are implicit nationalising the NHS, revers- to scupper Lansley’s White commissioning plans. in it, the ConDems would not ing the great legacy of Nye Paper, keep our NHS intact … No wonder one of the lead- The real disaster would be for GPs and their organisations to be able to carry out their plans. Bevan, and opening up a new and keep it public. ing apologists for the scheme, Until a few weeks ago the £100 billion market to private n You can donate by cheque Dr Michael Dixon of the NHS allow themselves to be cyni- cally used by the government BMA was conducting just such companies, it would be seen as (to ‘LHE’), or online at www. Alliance, has issued a rather a campaign, now sadly side- money well spent. healthemergency.org.uk l website: www.healthemergency.org.uk l email: [email protected] l snailmail: BCM London Health Emergency, London WC1N 3XX Page 2 Page 3 What they NHS White Paper McKinsey’s: summed up over-paid, are saying The NHS White Paper “Equity Trusts, social enterprises or the and Excellence: Liberating the for-profit private sector. Com- NHS” is the most radical NHS re- petition law will apply. form in 62 years since the NHS Patients must be given free about the was formed. choice of GP (not restricted to over-rated, Among its proposals: where they live), choice of any ‘Efficiency savings’ of £20 provider, choice of named billion are to be generated by consultant team, and choic- 2014. es in maternity care, mental over here! White Paper It aims to abolish the exist- health, diagnostic testing, Carillion, which has contracts The Conservative Party’s ing commissioning organisa- long term conditions and end One bizarre side-effect of the presented as an undergradu- for PFI hospitals and outsourc- Bow Group, the oldest cen- tions – 152 Primary Care Trusts of life care. Con-Dem coalition govern- ate research project at a uni- ing was “excited”, Virgin-owned tre-right think tank in Britain, and 10 Strategic Health Au- Performance targets in- ment was the publication of versity it would be rejected for private healthcare provider As- claims key strands of the re- thorities – and hand the main cluding waiting times are to two documents which the New inadequate use of supporting sura Medical’s chief executive forms are unfeasible and risk responsibility for commission- be scrapped and replaced by Labour government had stub- evidence and references, the was “enthusiastic”. creating a postcode lottery of ing services with a combined “outcome targets”. bornly refused to allow into the lack of any clear structure or budget of £80 billion to GPs. The Foundation Trust regu- Healthinvestor magazine healthcare. public domain. approach, and the lack of any GPs will be required by lator, Monitor, is to become an has also eagerly embraced the The Nuffield Trust has warned Both are the result of work coherent or collected conclu- their contract to be members economic regulator for all or- white paper, which it argues that the reforms “will require by US management consult- sions. of around 500 local “consor- ganisations providing NHS care. “offers the private sector a raft significant management exper- ants McKinsey’s, and address Nonetheless this document tiums” which will be statutory The public health and of opportunities in the health- tise to implement smoothly,” the issue of the drive for ‘effi- contains many of the seed ide- bodies to carry out the respon- health promotion functions of care market by enabling pa- and that “There is a huge risk ciency savings’ (aka cuts) in the as around which PCTs across sibilities of commissioning. PCTs are to be taken over by lo- tients to achieve greater choice that this level of reform cannot NHS to bridge a predicted £20 London, grouped into five se- They will receive a manage- cal government through new and control over their treat- be implemented without major billion gap between a frozen cretive “sectors,” have been ment allowance to allow them ‘health and wellbeing boards’, budget and rising pressures by meeting behind closed doors ment and care through access failure”.