After last week’s wake-up call at the local elections, the Coalition is under pressure to re-examine how its policies reflect voters’ expectations. While there is much debate about the merits of Lord reform, gay marriage, austerity targets and growth policies, the two parties would do well to turn their attention to recent passing of the Health and Social Care bill.
Yesterday’s decision by the Government to veto the information commissioner’s legal demand to publish the risk register reminds us all what a controversial bill this truly was. The Government is still not keen to reveal to the public the extremities of the risk assessment, although an early version of the register, leaked in March, suggests that the worst case scenario of these reforms would be that “the Bill proceeds, without assurance that the whole system is affordable." The document continues: "There is a risk that costs of the future system cannot be controlled."
No wonder the bill received such widespread criticism in the run-up to it becoming law. In February this year, eight significant health organisations fully opposed the bill, two opposed it in its current form and three were neutral. On top of that a YouGov survey showed the 65% of NHS staff wanted the bill withdrawn in its entirety.
I repeat these statistics as it shows the uphill battle the Government has to secure good outcomes from such a fiercely unpopular policy.
Since the bill became law there has been on-the-ground confusion on how best to implement its policy’s, a situation not helped by aggressive private companies there were waiting in the wings ready to take advantage of this initial knowledge vacumn. Virgin now controls 18 NHS contracts across 15 counties, and Labour back-bencher Dr Éoin Clarke estimates that £2 billion worth of NHS contracts have now been given to private companies.
Despite this plethora of contracts there is no evidence that such outsourcing of NHS contracts will deliver better services, increased choice or long-term control of costs. Indeed, the first NHS hospital to be completely privately run, Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire, has recently caused a furore by announcing it intends to make a profit of £60 million in the next decade despite concerns that to do so would mean making 'eyewatering cuts'. On top of this there are ludicrous stories of physiotherapists who aren’t allowed to touch their patients following a new contract agreed by Principia clinical commissioning group (replacing the local Primacy Care Trust) in Rushcliffe, Nottinghamshire.
If a patient is unhappy with the care they are offered they can complain to Healthwatch, but they’d have to wait five months as, despite the fact that the bill is already on the statute books, it doesn’t launch until October this year. Once this organisation does finally get round to opening, it can then pass on complaints to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) which is now responsible for ensuring that private health providers are honouring the quality expected of them. This is the same CQC that has been overseeing private social care providers since 2009 and has twice been humiliated by BBC Panorama revelation's of abuse at care homes that the CQC had already inspected multiple times and declared acceptable. Despite clearly struggling in its current role, the Government expects the CQC to more than double its workload with 30% less staff. The public may accept private providers profiting from NHS work, but in exchange it will expect the service it receives to be better than what is currently on offer and it is clear that the systems in place to manage this are already found wanting before they get off the starting block.
It isn’t even clear that in the current rush to implement these reforms the basic principles of free market capitalism are honoured, a principle that is the bedrock behind the spending decentralisation of this Tory-led Government. Despite health secretary Lansley’s much vaunted initiative of giving GPs the budget and power to buy services for its patients, it is alleged one local commissioning group in West Sussex weren’t told about a new contract award to Virgin healthcare until after it was signed off. The commissioning board were therefore not able to consider the merit of the bid in comparison to other interested parties – a clear failure of the health bill’s objective of tendering-out NHS work to help achieve better value for money for the taxpayer.
After such a turbulent month the Government most probably couldn’t bear the horrendous headlines that would result if it revealed what risks it is truly taking with our beloved NHS. But whether made public or not, those risks outlined by the risk register still remain. No doubt the Government is hedging its bets that the new Health Bill would have bedded in by the time an election is called in 2015, and any initial concerns by the public would have been proved false. Three years is also enough time for the NHS as we know it to have unravelled, for charges for non-urgent surgery or treatment to be mooted, for waiting lists to grow, for private companies to make large profits while limiting the contact patients have with doctors. And the first few months of policy implementation don't embue one with confidence that the NHS is in safe hands.
So Cameron and Clegg be warned: the battle to push the health bill through parliament could prove miniscule compared to the battle on voters’ doorsteps in 2015 to convince them that you can be trusted with the NHS.
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