Lansley takes one step forward and two steps back on spending

John Page

He's surely not up to the job of running the ?3rd largest organisation in the world?

seb2

So on the NHS:

Labour = billions of efficiencies
Lansley = spend, spend, spend

What a doofus.

Put this together with his backwards ideas about GPs closing on evenings and weekends and you have to wonder if we are about to have the most producer-captured health secretary of all time.

Olaf Rye

The NHS is an obscenely wasteful institution and I feel that it is vital to extirpate as much of the management as possible--cuts to the front-line services should only be considered once management has been brutalised. Perhaps it is worth considering writing into law a maximum of 10% (which I think is generous) for administration ? If the present staff claims that they cannot manage with this, then replace them. We have people denied drugs and treatment to keep a professional class of managers employed. This is all Labour has achieved: the elevation of a management class to dominate all aspects of life. It truly disgusts me and I treat the managers I encounter as if they were Stasi functionaries (and they are pretty bloody close: they do anything their bosses ask, no matter how destructive and immoral, claiming it is 'lawful' and that their jobs were on the line).

Moraymint

Reinforces my view that our political elite (ha!) is still failing utterly to grasp the nature, scope and scale of the economic wasteland that Brown is set to bequeath to an incoming government.

These guys really do need to get a grip of just how aggressively they're going to have to lay in to all public services if this country is not indeed rapidly to go belly up. The NHS of all public services is ripe for cost cutting.

Do they not read the same apolitical analyses as the rest of us? I'll lay money that the next government will have to "do a Canada" and slice anything from 10% to 30% off public sector costs over the next 5 years.

If the next government does not develop a mindset for economic turnaround (as opposed to economic tinkering), then I guarantee the IMF will do it for us before the end of the next parliament.

Mark my words.

Chris lancashire

Yes, fairly stupid and, as yoy say, the Tories have fallen for the Brown line that more spending = better services.

Waste is just as rampant in the NHS as it is across most of the public sector.
This is fairly crude politicking from Lansley.

jonthan

Peter – I agree with the thread behind your analysis; I accept that Health spending in current climate should be cut, but here’s the but…. that isn’t the current Conservative Party Policy and nor will it be at the next election. I think we can both agree – that it is too late in the day to change tack now. So for good or ill, Lansley has secured a pledge from Cameron & Osborne to ring-fence his budget, so why shouldn’t he shout about it from the roof tops and try to embarrass the GVN on the subject.

Of course, you are right – higher spending does not automatically mean a better service – and perhaps Lansley should stress (to a greater degree) that the Conservatives will be looking for efficiencies savings to off-set the higher PFI payments that are due from 2011-2 onwards - thus protecting further front line services. But in the end, you cannot blame a single shadow cabinet minister from trumpeting his official party policy line. It might be wrong – but surely that’s the fault of the entire shadow cabinet.

StephenDC

But jonthan, he isn't just trumpeting his own spending plans, he is also scaremongering about vital efficiency savings the NHS is trying to deliver.

It's the very worst possible signal to be sending the NHS at exactly the time when they should be trying to deliver major efficiencies.

He will be a terrible health minister. It's a travesty that he is the only member of the shadow cabinet to be GUARANTEED a cabinet job.

Lee Jakeman

The term "loose cannon" comes readily to mind.

Jeremy

One longs for a debate, for a dialogue - for anything, really - that is more intelligent, adult and sophisticated than the infantile and sub-Orwellian nonsense - "All spending good. All cuts bad." - to which we are repeatedly subjected. I am growing tired of hearing it. Wouldn't it be better if the British public were both better educated in the first place, and then grew up a bit in the second....?

Then, perhaps, their politicians might - and might be able to - stop talking to them as though they were a bunch of childish illiterates.

“NHS staff and patients have an urgent need to know whether Labour will match the Conservative commitment to real terms increases in NHS spending after 2011.”

I wouldn't be committing myself to any increases in spending until I first knew just how good or bad the economic situation is - and is likely to become - for the years in question. And if that situation was likely to be bad, then I would be making it clear that there will have to be cuts in public expenditure. And that the NHS will have to shoulder its fair share of those cuts.

What is the point of pretending otherwise? And where is the virtue in guaranteeing otherwise?

I don't know what this man is doing. Playing politics, I suppose...

Hysteria

hmmm - maybe I am giving them too much credit here - but what he said was.....

"We are determined to drive greater efficiency in the NHS and we welcome any genuine savings but these will be reinvested in the NHS as we increase health spending year by year"

So could the TOTAL budget remain flat (or even fall) if the spend on "core services" goes up (through efficiencies, cutting outreach workers, outsourcing etc etc .......

If the Tories really do think a higher budget is better and equates to an improvement by definition, then we truly are stuffed as Moraymint points out.

And actually would having the grown-ups come in (aka the IMF) be such a bad thing if our own "leaders" ignore what needs to be done?

Fergus Pickering

The underlying problem with the NHS is all these old peopople who won't die. And there are going to be more of them. It's not Lansley's fault but they will keep on cheating the grave.

Chris Heathcote

You say that Lansley makes; 'little, if any, mention of NHS waste', but how does that equate with his line; 'We are determined to drive greater efficiency'?

Pete Hoskin

jonthan and Chris Heathcote: I apologise, my original post wasn't clear enough. I was trying to make a general point about how Lansley doesn't refer to "waste" very often - even though he does so, implicitly, here - but it didn't quite come out right.

I've changed the post, so hopefully it should make a bit more sense now.

Jonathan

Stephen: I think (or at least I hope) you have misunderstood what Lansley is trying to do. He is not trying to scaremonger or criticise Labour for finding efficiency savings. Rather he is trying to force the GVN to…

a. Admit that these efficiency savings are planned; something that Brown would rather not do…
AND
b. Force Labour to either commit to reinvest any savings into the NHS or admit that these ‘savings’ will be cut from the overall NHS budget.

Obviously, this debate has party political advantages for the Conservative Party; since it highlights that Labour are already planning savings (and not extra investment) in the NHS. This alone contradicts Brown’s claim that any cut would automatically impact on front line services i.e. x # of nurses or doctors will be sacked if you cut the budget by Y£’s.

Secondly, if Labour refuses to promise to reinvest these efficiency savings, then the Tories can run their election campaign on a promise to spend more on Health than Labour. Whereas, if Labour does promise to ring-fence Health, then it nullifies the Mr. 10% attack on David Cameron – because by implication, Brown will also be committed to such a reduction in the other departmental budgets… You might not like Lansley’s position (and from an ideological stand-point, nor do I) but from a political point of view – it does rather shaft Labour.

Olaf Rye

Wait a moment--why do people call government spending 'investment' ? I shall go out and 'invest' in a drink or perhaps a cigar. We should call this what it is: not investment, but spending.

Screwtape

After 12 years of Labour, which is in more need of additional resources - The Bottomless Pit and dubious (to say the least) overseas "aid" schemes or The Armed Forces?

Who would have thought the British Conservative Party could be so perverted?

Hysteria

Olaf - well done - most observers on the right spotted this Orwellian trend in about - oh - 1997....

I think it was Mrs T who said "there is no such thing as government money" and she was right - QE notwithstanding it is all our money!!!!!

Travis Bickle

Olaf

Au contraire. I invested a couple of hundred quid on the 4:30 at Ascot. I just didn't invest it very wisely.

Olaf Rye

Thanks for the comments Hysteria and Travis ... I just wish that the word 'investment' would be jumped on by more commentators whenever this old chestnut was rolled out by politicians. I agree that there can be genuine investments, but this is an absurd notion in public services, especially when such a large proportion of the expenditure goes on management.