Will the coalition rue ring-fencing health?

shorpe

The nice thing about this is that the Tory right can't blame the LibDems for it - the ringfence was in the Tory manifesto but not the LD one. I'm sure they'll still find a way, though.

Alan

"Spending in other departments will have to be cut by a savage 25 percent to pay for it."

What is savage about 25%? Even 100% would not be savage for some departments.

strapworld

Of course they will rue the day. The NHS is a monster needing to be cut down to size and to do the job the people want from it.

Look at Foundation Hospitals. Have they improved services? What do patients say about them? My view is that it was a device to ensure the executive team got massive pay inceases.

Look at Quango's! So many. I wrote to the Sec of State for Health, when he was the Shadow, pointing out the great number. He never even bothered to acknowledge it! There is no need for any of these bodies and would save the Country billions.

Look at Nursing. All specialists there are no nurses trained for the good old fashioned needs of patients T L C! all of them are pushed to specialise. So if one ward is short of nurses, they cannot ask the next ward because of this nonsense.

Look at services provided. WHY is cosmetic surgery provided? There is a real need to curtail many of the services provided.

By ring fencing the NHS they will carry on as usual. So ridiculous

Kennybhoy

David Blackburn,

Didnt I read or see somewhere that Nick Clegg's ideas on NHS reform were way more radical than the Tories'...?

Naomi Muse

The admin will find itself outside the NHS and the front line staff will be inside.

Also, when the feedback on what the electorate want is fed in, will give a perfect opportunity to cut elements of the NHS.

Fergus Pickering

No., of course they won't rue it. You yopung folks don't seem to realise that Health spending is bound to rise because of all the old people, like me, half of them gaga, not like me. What we OUGHT tro do is drink, smoke and mainline, thuis dying earlier and being less of a drag on spending etc. But we ain't going to.So you'll just have to cut education and benefits instead. Hard cheese but that's how it is. I reckon we could save a tidy sum by getting out of Afghanistan NOW. We do not owe the USA anything, do we now. And, as I have said elsewhere, I wouldn't piss on Obama if he was on fire. Most of us Oldies agree with me on this one. The fellowe only appealed to the young and foolish.

SUSAN HILL

I think this is knee-jerk sentimentality. Of course some spending on health needs to be retained but the NHS gobbles up vast sums and most of the money never gets to the front line, just like International aid. They need to send in a team headed by a hard-headed business like Gerry Robinson to look at every hospital's spending and see where cuts can be made and wastage reduced without affecting patient care. They could do it easily. Even those things like the David Law pot-plant allowance need to be looked at and ditched. Management management management - that's what needs to be cut down in numbers.
NOTHING should be ring-fenced.

John Richardson

Mr Blackburn.

Let me explain 'soming' to you.

We do not live in a country where any-one would resign over any defense related cuts.

No.

All that would happen is that a couple of dozen more men that necessary would die.

Maybe 200 or 2000 or 'soming'.

That's all.
Are you still counting ?
Honestly ?

If you can accidentally (WMD) invade a country, and no politician apologise, never mind reflect, what can be done without shame ?

Boots ?
Housing for families ?
Hospital beds ?
Body armour ?
More than four rounds ?
Armoured bomb disposal vehicles ?
Helicopters ?
Jobs after getting maimed ?
Book into a hotel in uniform ?

You joined up dintcha ?

--------------------------------------------

How I would love to visit MSM-land.

It all sounds so nice.

What with 'Tories' and with 'resigning',
'Our Boys Battling For Britain', and all.

Yeah.
Like...like our shared the past somehow....

Andre

Cameron needs to grasp the NHS nettle. It is profligate and wasteful. People are dying because of decisions made by NHS civil servants rather than patient - employed insurance providers. Can he at least start by freezing non-medical recruitment? Start charging full market rates for IVF, abortion, sex change ops, cosmetic surgery and all psycho-babble treatment. Shock horror.

oldtimer

Almost certainly they will rue the day - just as with the aid budget. No doubt pre electoral politics was the reason for the original pledge and post electoral cuts politics is the reason for its continuation now. It is the ultimate safety net.

I would not be surprised if the increase year on year was a measly 0.1%. In itself this will require a significant cultural change and much greater efficiency from the NHS, given the huge funding increases enjoyed by the NHS in recent years. I also wonder if todays announcement about care after release from hospital will also add to the spending pressures. I think that more for less will still apply.

David Ossitt

“Will the coalition rue ring-fencing health?”

Yes of course they will; also ring-fencing oversees aid.

When it comes to cuts nothing should be excluded.

I would suspect that a larger percentage of the spend, is wasted in health than in many other departments.

Cut the waste and stop the rot now.

toni

strapworld. Which cosmetic surgery procedures are you referring to, and how many are being currently provided by the NHS, that should be withdrawn?

Woody

I work for an NHS Foundation Hospital and I have to work in a building away from the main hospital that desperately needs upgrading. There is only one kettle between 20 people.
I have to watch whilst the managers grab all the best offices, order the best furntiture and spend most of the day dreaming up new 'box-ticking' initiatives just to justify their jobs.
I have been waiting nearly four weeks for an IT person to come and look at my computer but if I complain to my line manager, the answer just comes back we are 'short staffed'.
They could save millions by getting rid of these useless managers and reinvest the money in replacing nurses who leave (which they are not doing) and are just asking existing staff to do more and more.
I feel it was a mistake to 'ring fence' the NHS, as this is just a green light to carry on wasting money.
I fully understand why David Cameron did it and it was a good idea at the time but its time for a rethink.

JohnAnt

I'd assumed that Cameron's lunatic promise to ringfence the NHS was an attempt not to lose the election unnecessarily, and to look 'nice' and 'social'. You can see the point - there are rather a lot of them, plus 'their sisters and their mothers and their cousins and their aunts...'

So now I'm on the lookout for a speech in which Cameron or Osborne announces that everything is so much worse than imagined that electoral ringfencing promises can no longer themselves be...ringfenced. The IMF and the ratings agencies will be helpful here.
QED.

ajs

And surely the answer to criticism about reducing the ring-fence or whatever new term is found to describe it-is that until the new Govt was/is able to exhume the wasteful Labour Party spending and its inefficencies, they could not know of the said level of waste, inefficiency, over -staffing, wasteful contracts, etc etc.
The Govt MUST exhume and REVEAL these horrors.

RL54

I sincerely hope that the NHS will be made to justify the £bns spent on it over the last few years.
This sacred cow is a black hole and needs lancing. Muxed metaphors yes but positive action is vital.
No department should be ring fenced - not Defence, NHS, transport - nothing
Will they have the balls?

Sean Haffey

They could stop subsidising treatments which don't work. See http://sean-haffey.blogspot.com/2010/05/good-front-line-surgery.html for a good example.

mongoose

Ringfencing anything should be beyond the pale (boom boom!).

SUSAN HILL

WOODY. This is PRECISELY what I mean and I think you should e-mail your MP, David Cameron, Andrew Lansley and anyone else you can think of giving the information you gave on here but in more detail. There needs to be a team of people going in and questioning the need for each one of those management jobs.
But I don`t understand why one of you doesn`t take in your own electric kettle. They're cheap enough.

strapworld

toni, are you for real? What planet do you live on? Are you suggesting there are none?

Moraymint

If this comes to pass (ie the NHS ring-fenced and the defence budget decimated), I'd like to see a succession of senior military officers telling the government where to stick it.

I feel reasonably well qualified to make this statement as an ex-serviceman myself and with Mrs Moraymint a practising hospital doctor.

Hysteria

@ toni - how about sex change operations for starters? Should this be payed for out of my taxation? Don't think so.......

Phrase all these "what's in / what's out" questions in the light of "would you be happy to see this itemised on the debit side of your payslip" - puts a sharper focus on the question.

TGF UKIP

When Tiberius doesn't instantly leap to his young hero's defence, it really does prove that Dave is massively wrong on this one.

Liberty

It is incredible that the NHS cannot work more efficiently and effectively. Every business needs to look for more effective ans efficient ways of working. ring fencing it means they do not have to look for less costly ways of doing things. It shows again that governments should not have anything to do with management. They should focus on creating a market and improving professionalism and get out of the way.

2trueblue

When my son and I visited Gt Ormond street in the early 1980's for treatment the deptartment was well laid out and functional. (I was a nurse prior to looking after my children) Within 5yrs the area was populated by managers offices, and the clinical area had diminished to one eight of the space! Luckily my son could then move on to an adult facility.
I would like to see this government ringfence the NHS to treating those who have paid into to our system, citizens, legal residents and genuine asylum seekers. For those passing through there should be emergency treatment, otherwise they should pay and this is what happens when WE go abroad. What is so difficult about that? The NHS loses large amounts treating people who are not entitled to treatment, and in some cases are here to deliberately take advantage of our NHS. Thatis one area that we should be concentrating on and would save a lot of money.

Alexander Pelling

Surely the solution is for Cameron to call an immediate general election and seek a mandate for cutting the NHS?

Verity

Susan Hill writes: "Of course some spending on health needs to be retained but the NHS gobbles up vast sums and most of the money never gets to the front line, just like International aid."

If trillions of pounds and dollars of money earned by Brits, Aussies, Canadians, Kiwis, French, Germans, Singaporeans etc never gets to the front line of "international aid", why is it being funnelled through in the first place? Especially given that, after 60 years of sending money they would rather have kept for their own families, and their own futures, to Third World dumps, the West has noted that the greedy maw of Africa still gapes.

The rest of the former Third World is getting on with it and coming up. I would say Mexico is now a First World country - given the standard of medical care, civil behaviour and administration. And income.

Africa, full of people who can't administer themselves, needs to be recolonised, and we missed the chance because the Chinese spotted the opportunity and weren't as jumpy about criticism as the Brits, the French and even the Belgians. I wish them luck in extracting great fortunes from Africa. My God! Can you imagine being burdened with the Belgian Congo?

And, I can't be bothered to look it up, but what nation formerly administered ghastly Somalia? They should get a Nobel Prize.

Verity

John Richardson ... broke my heart. The chain of the folk in our islands has been deliberately broken, but they allowed it to happen. They allowed the socialists to destroy our fabric as folk, when we were, in one way or another, all joined together.

The forcing of islamics into our country was a deliberate assault against our ancient society.(Odd enough, isn't it, that we welcome Hindus. Rational and reasonable, kindly people. And, in the main, nice looking.)

Viv Evans

You all did notice, didn't you, in the first piece linked to above, that Osborne accepts that select committees can influence and/or cut budget decisions.

So the wily politicians have found a way out - all you need to do is write to your MPs and tell them that even ring-fenced budgets need to be cut.
Osborne will be hugely grateful, I'm sure!

TomTom

The NHS is used by politicians as a "Unifying Group Experience" as a form of social binding in a fragmented society. It is unfortunately a public good systematically looted by administration and freeloaders from overseas and drastically short of physiotherapy and related services abundant in Germany but rationed here.

The International Health Service even has Outreach Clinics in Pakistan to support Bradford health care, and an African AIDS Hotline in Manchester and requires volunteers speaking Congolese dialects to communicate with patients.

Aneurin Bevan could not have envisaged such Medecin sans Frontieres funded by taxation providing for the fast-growing population groups of the world...in Britain

Tim Carpenter LPUK

By "ring fencing health" this government perpetuated the absurd Labour meme that "spending* = delivery". And we will now pay for this AGAIN.

It was a very very bad move considering how large NHS spending is as a percentage of overall cost, second only to welfare.

The new administration should be slaying the pestilential dragons of Labour, not feeding them.

* which Labour disingenuously called "investment"

Holly ......

It is only the NHS budget that is ringfenced
the useless bods at the top and the 'bad' staff are not.
Any savings will be kept within the NHS budget.
Cuts will be made,but not the budget.
Not exactly rocket science.

Wight Tory

I think you all are missing something here.

The phrase "ring fenced" in the minds of many suggest that the money paid in is protected. My take on this is that "spending on essential and valued services" is being protected. That is a big difference.

Real time spending increases will mean that monies saved from the wasteful practices and services that WILL be cut from NHS budgets. And lets be honest here, Does a health quango or two that has to be abolished/merged count as a NHS cut? It doesn't in terms of cutting front line services and as such removing that spending ISN'T taking money out of the NHS (the bit that the promise hasn't broken) but really making it more fit for purpose....

2trueblue

Tom Tom, I am with you on the translators. If people come here it is not the host counrtys responsibility to provide translators. This is not done in France, Spain or anywhere else that I am aware of. Why do we do it? The whole thing needs rethinking. There are situations where the translators cost more than the doctors. Crazy or what? I worked in the health service for a long time and my children have grown up but the the health service seems to have gone backwards.

What should be ringfenced is the access to the service. It is all in the name, National Health Service, for those of our nation. Simples.

withycombe

So we are not to have cuts in the NHS; but surely there must be many efficiency savings that could be made. Here there are almost no GPs that work a full day.
Cancer detection rates are appalling because many local doctors simply do not bother. It is amazing to observe hospitals at weekends and evenings - they are more or less shut down. There can be few facilities that have so much investment for so few hours. many factories and shops work around the clock.

Samuel Buckett

He'll ditch the NHS ringfence, just watch; public consultations always provide the opportunity to finesse policy. It will be something along the usual lines of cutting cost without cutting essential services...

AndrewSouthLondon

If the NHS were to treat only those who are entitled to it, there would huge savings. First hand recent experience: 1: woman turns up in NHS clinic with child with many problems. Seems unsure of its date of birth, or other details. She is clearly not the real mother, who sent the child from Africa to the UK in the care of “an aunt” get treatment. 2: Asian family bring grandmother to UK for heart treatment giving daughters address. 3: two thirds of new cases in local AIDS clinic are Africans, entitled to care because they are registered as “students” here.

And so it goes on day in day out in the NHS - the worlds favourite health service.
One of the problems in stopping this, like AIDS treatment, is the NHS Consultants who would see their "business" falling and prefer to repeat the mantra "we need more resources "

Fergus Pickering

Want some savings? Stop keeping very premature babies alive. Stop giving old lechers viagra. Stop - as everybody else says - foreigners freeloading on our services. Cut down on IVF treatment and make those who have it and then abort the baby because they've changed heir minds, pay the £17,000 cost of the treatment. Oh, and the cost of the abortion. Make everybody pay a prescription charge. The amount of free medicines I have had showered on me since I reached 60 beggars belief. This is off the top of my head. Oh - all managers on £100,000 per year to take a 20% salary cut. I don't know that that would save so very much but it would sure be satisfying. Make people pay for hospital food.Perhaps the stuff would improve.

Fred Habuckle

All the cuts to the public sector and welfare will result in a lot of ill people. Perhaps that is were the NHS comes in. The priority should be to feed and house the needy appropriately and then they won't rely on the NHS. The NHS does seem bloated at over £100billion I must say.

Greg Lattson

Thanks for posting such a great article here. I must say that we can't and shouldn't cut our spendings on health because it is the most important thing in our life. I mean we must value it the most. I hope that our politicians will understand that and everything will be all right. Thanks for posting such a great post here by the way.
Regards, Greg from Isotretinoin bestellen