NHS Bill: David Cameron 'Digging His Own Grave' With Controversial Health Reforms

Miliband

First Posted: 29/02/2012 14:01 Updated: 29/02/2012 14:01   PA

Conservatives are digging their own electoral graves by pressing ahead with NHS reforms in the face of growing opposition from health professionals, Labour leader Ed Miliband said today.

He was speaking after the first GP commissioning group called on David Cameron to scrap his Health Bill, warning that it was getting in the way of their work and was not needed to improve services to patients.

During rowdy exchanges in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister played down opposition from professional bodies to his reforms, pointing out that in some cases only a small proportion of members had taken part in votes against the Bill.

As the Health and Social Care Bill returned to the House of Lords for the latest day of a protracted and fractious debate, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley received a setback as the Tower Hamlets Care Commissioning Group (CCG) went public with its opposition to the legislation.

The east London group has been at the forefront of the move to GP-led commissioning, which is at the heart of the Bill, and its chair Dr Sam Everington hosted Mr Lansley for his first speech as Health Secretary.

But the CCG wrote to Mr Cameron today to tell him he was wrong to claim that GPs' participation in the reforms meant they backed the Bill, which they said should be ditched.

"Your rolling restructuring of the NHS compromises our ability to focus on what really counts - improving quality of services for patients, and ensuring value for money during a period of financial restraint," wrote the GPs.

"We care deeply about the patients that we see every day and we believe the improvements we all want to see in the NHS can be achieved without the bureaucracy generated by the Bill.

"Your Government has interpreted our commitment to our patients as support for the Bill. It is not."

Mr Miliband seized on discontent over the health reforms for the fourth week in succession as he challenged Mr Cameron at Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons.

Quoting Dr Everington's concerns, the Labour leader told the Prime Minister he had "lost the confidence even of the GPs he says he wants to be at the heart of these reforms".

The Bill has been described by former NHS chief executive Lord Crisp as "a mess... confused and confusing" and there have been calls for its withdrawal from the Royal Colleges of GPs, nurses, midwives and radiologists as well as the Faculty of Public Health, Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, Community Practitioners and Health Visitors Association, and Patients Association, said Mr Miliband.

"Doesn't it ever occur to him that, just maybe, they are right and he is wrong?" he asked.

And he directed a barb at Conservatives who jeered him across the chamber: "Their support for the Health Bill is digging their own burial at the next general election."

But Mr Cameron accused the Labour leader of taking a "totally opportunist position" on the Bill, when he accepted that reform was needed.

Just 7% of the Royal College of GPs' 44,000 members and 2% of 50,000 physiotherapists had voiced opposition to the Bill when their professional organisations surveyed members' views, said the Prime Minister.

"I know that's enough for the unions to elect a leader of the Labour Party, but that's about as far as it will go," he said.

Mr Cameron listed the National Association of Primary Care, the NHS Alliance, the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations and the Foundation Trust Network as bodies which back his Bill.

And he accused Mr Miliband of dodging debate on the substance of reforms: "Four weeks in a row of NHS questions, but not a single question of substance - not one.

"All about process, all about politics, never about the substance... We all know what he is against, but isn't it time he told us what on Earth he is for?"

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Conservatives are digging their own electoral graves by pressing ahead with NHS reforms in the face of growing opposition from health professionals, Labour leader Ed Miliband said today. He was spe...
Conservatives are digging their own electoral graves by pressing ahead with NHS reforms in the face of growing opposition from health professionals, Labour leader Ed Miliband said today. He was spe...
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05:29 PM on 03/03/2012
The Liberals destroyed themselved just after the beginning of the last century now this century they are going to take the Tories with them.
photo
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Norman Mitchison
12:36 PM on 03/01/2012
The Lunatics are definitely running the Asylum.
12:19 PM on 03/01/2012
After voting 13 times in my life for the Tories, the last time was DEFINITELY the last time, the last Labour riff raff organisation wouldn't listen to REAL experts on the economy and look how we ended up. COMPLETELY busted. This bunch in the Palace of WestMONSTERs are doing exactly the same, WHAT makes them think they know better than the REAL experts in the medical world? They are acting like Hitler acted over the battle of Stalingrad, directing the battle from a thousand miles away, not REALLY knowing what was going on at all.
The TOE RAG TORIES have really lost it now, and what happened to Maggie Thatcher over the polltax will happen to them over these health reforms, yes, perhaps there is reform needed but let the medical experts be the ones to do it or at least LISTEN to them.
12:01 PM on 03/01/2012
I don,t trust this government at all. All I can see is that these people are only looking after themselves and there wealthy friends and that`s a fact.
11:42 AM on 03/01/2012
THE TORIES ARE DIGGING THEIR GRAVE BUT I DONT THINK WE CAN HAND IT OVER TO LIMP WRIST ED.
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NOSHER
10:59 AM on 03/01/2012
i hope they are digging a hole ive voted labour all my life but i say throw the three of the parties in the hole and bury the lot it will never change look how much blair has made and he was just a school teacher in durham they are all scammers its time for a change and we are the only ones that can do it so lets get grafting
majdf18148
I have nothing to declare but my curiosity
09:23 AM on 03/01/2012
I ask only this. How many people on this post and indeed in general, have actually STUDIED the reforms bill and fully understand the thrust of those reforms. I don't mean glanced at it, read what others have written, listened to others' opinions but actually read, understood and analysed the Bill in depth. I have and that is why I have no fears about privatisation. We have been using the private health care sector to supplement the NHS throughout the Labour years! My fears centre on the reform's increased reliance on competition within the NHS, ostensibly under the banner that competition drives up perfomance excellence. Well my experience of competition in the NHS is that it does exactly the opposite. For those who don't know there is a Govt set national tariffe for all NHS procedures from a hip replacement to cataract surgery and no commissioning group will outsource their healthcare contracts to private firms who want to charge more than that price because their budgets are set using those national prices.Furthermore only a small change in a hospital's income would see it spiral into financial difficulty and start to have to get rid of staff, its most expensive cost. GP commissioning groups will be all too well aware that any substantial deviation from spending at the local hospital could cause its eventual demise and they simply won't allow that to happen, they daren't!
09:54 AM on 03/01/2012
'they simply won't allow that to happen, they daren't'

You can rest assured that our grossly overpaid GPs will have absolutely no qualms or hesitation whatsoever about allowing that to happen if there is money in it for them
majdf18148
I have nothing to declare but my curiosity
01:09 PM on 03/01/2012
I base my words on 15 years experience working alongside GPs, hospital consultants and CEOs, an in-depth knowledge of the NHS and the market forces within which it operates, the contracting system that controls the NHS and the budgetry constraints and efficiency savings system it operates under. I am entirely confident in my assertion about the preservation of local hospitals. Your obvious dislike of GPs is clearly your own matter but I have worked with some really good GPs, some not so good and some who fall into the category you outline. Again I base my comments on a sound knowledge base derived from a cohort of some 180 GP principals and salaried GPs. If you have greater experience then I bow to your better knowledge.That aside we are all entitled to a viewpoint ergo I am not discounting what you say, I am only sad that is your experience.
09:16 AM on 03/01/2012
Want a hand Dave ??? ive got a JCB doing nowt and would gladly help in such a noble cause. Just hurry up and jump in it
09:06 AM on 03/01/2012
The reforms Cameron and co want, are nothing more than another scam to syphon off taxpayers money into private bank accounts as has happened in the past with all privatised publicly owned companies and services in the UK.
Hinchinbrook hospital has already suffered this fate and is now run by the foreign private health care company ' Circle ', this done without any consultation or permission of the owners, the UK public.
Are we now living in a dictatorship ?
08:40 AM on 03/01/2012
One argument by the pro privatisation lobby I can't understand is that its cheaper and more efficient. More efficient possibly. Cheaper for tax payers , how so? If tax payers pay NHS or any other public department for a service there is no profit element. If a private company charges tax payers for a service there's higher wages for those at the top and dividends for share holders whilst the labour forced are paid lower than they were before. Its redistribution of wealth in the wrong direction. I see that British Gas, British rail and Electric has worked out much cheaper now they are owned by the French. Not. maybe we should privatise Parliment or the House of Lords
08:31 AM on 03/01/2012
Anyone explain exactly what the bill is about cos I haven't a clue
09:09 AM on 03/01/2012
If you Google 38 degrees you can read some of the dangers associated with the health bill
09:44 AM on 03/01/2012
Interesting thanks
09:19 AM on 03/01/2012
Quite simple really, privatisation of the NHS. That is the NHS run by foreign private health care companies.
08:02 AM on 03/01/2012
Well in answer to your question at question time Mr Cameron, Milliband and the majority of the country are for keeping the NHS out of the hands of American private health company’s and for not disrupting the NHS to the extent that patient care is compromised, but it is quite clear from the bully boy tactics that you are employing at question time that you really already know this and it is you who are afraid of debating the issue fairly.
11:49 PM on 02/29/2012
Cameron is trying to emanate Maggi Thatcher by making radical change. For instance the Poll Tax.. One difference is that she did not have the Cleggites pushing at the back. Seems as the Lib Dems know that they will not be put back in power, and are feathering their own nest with a job in the privatised healthcare field with a high fat cat salary and pension at our cost.
11:48 PM on 02/29/2012
A Pollster speaks out for Cameron.

In a recent Government Poll using 10,000 pairs of twins it was found that 64% had similar thoughts and another 12% did the same 10% were of equal height and 90% were not. Of the remaining 24%; 7% declined to say whilst another 5% preferred not to say. 4% were clinically obese, 2% were jailed during the survey and the remaining 1% practised safe sex.
All twins had at least one mother and all mothers were female.

In a recent television interview Aaron Jacob, CEO of Molly Polly Polls stated that Polls can be "very right or wrong with their findings, Polls that are wrong with their findings can be very misleading; to be right is better and in fact to be right is correct.
The important thing here is to remember that Government pay very handsomely and and always settle their invoices on time.
11:29 PM on 02/29/2012
If one thinks it through sensibly, one must conclude that the Tory-LibDem cunning privatisation of the NHS will also have positive consequences in that those who are too thick to hold down a highly paid job in order to be able to afford the very high cost of future health care would quickly die off along with their offspring. This would result in an increase in intelligence in our population and consequently a UK with more cleaver people. We would then not have to look to other countries such as India for more cleaver people to do the jobs that our current unemployed thick population do not have enough brainpower to do.