Miliband guarantees a return to Brown's Big Idea for the NHS
Peter Hoskin 4:08pm
It would be so much easier for Ed Miliband to attract headlines if he could shout in Andrew Lansley's face. As it is, the Labour leader has had to make do with giving a speech today attacking the NHS reforms. Within the parameters of what he might say, it's an okay effort. The
predictable lines about ‘creeping privatisation’ are leavened by the admission that ‘the question is not reform or no reform. It is what type of reform.’ And he adds, by way
of a cross-party sweetener, that he would ‘get round the table’ with David Cameron to discuss ‘the future of the NHS’.
But the substance of the speech, rather than its rhetoric, is a little more questionable. There is, for instance, a heavy emphasis on what was one of the main policy ideas of Gordon Brown's
terminal premiership: legally-binding ‘guarantees’ for public service users. As Miliband puts it:
Which then develops into an attack on the Tories for not sticking by such guarantees, just like it was under Brown. But if the politics are the same, then so are the problems attached to this policy. The Economist's Bagehot columnist wrote an insightful article three years ago about how it ‘may lead to an orgy of litigation’, which I'd suggest CoffeeHousers read again. The bottom line is that these guarantees are probably unenforceable and, therefore, next to meaningless.‘I am clear: a small number of basic patient guarantees is right for the NHS.Like 18 week waiting, four hour A and E waits, 1 week to get your cancer test done.’
But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised to hear Miliband pushing this policy now, post-Gordon. Labour's 2010 manifesto made reference to these ‘guarantees’ over 50 times. And the author of that document? Yep — the current leader of the Labour party.
Previous
Magnolia
February 20th, 2012 5:02pm Report this comment"I week to get your cancer test done."
Groan.
Are we back to talking about all the false positives whose targets push aside the false negatives because the GPs might refer for cancer diagnosis but they don't actually either recognise it very well or indeed diagnose it.
Pathologists diagnose cancer and they're being squeezed by hospital management because they're just boring lab people without any clinical contact who can be told to do more cases per year ad infinitum.
Good luck with that Ed.
Andy H
February 20th, 2012 5:29pm Report this commentBloody typical. An incompetent fool politician wasting money by throwing it at an unreformed service promises unrealistic things to the electorate with the end result that it costs more money in litigation.
Just for once can we get policies from the Labour party that don't involve wasting our money?
TrevorsDen
February 20th, 2012 5:57pm Report this commentThe only nothing wrong with NHS reform as far as he is concerned only that Labour are not making it.
Hamstringing billions of pounds of spending and hours of health strategy and reducing it to a target for a week is pathetic.
William Blakes Ghost
February 20th, 2012 6:07pm Report this commentI draw you to the first rule of British politics:
LABOUR LIE!
Any guarantees will be meaningless...
David Lindsay
February 20th, 2012 7:38pm Report this commentThe hung Parliament compelled their absence from the Cabinet, but Cameron has pressed on with the policies that Lord Milburn would have pursued as Health Secretary, and with the policies that Lord Purnell would have pursued as restored Work and Pensions Secretary, having already begun to implement them when he had last held that office.
However, the Health and Social Care Bill, which would have won Labour the 2010 Election outright if anyone had known about it in advance, is now denounced by absolutely everyone, while the vicious forced use of the unemployed to take away the jobs of the low-paid has been well and truly rumbled, as have the antics of the private companies being paid by how many sick and disabled people they pass as fit for work. Next on the hit list ought to be the savage slashing of school budgets in order to fund the racist vanity projects of London media gadflies.
The era that began with the death of John Smith, an era which ended within the Labour Party with the election of Ed Miliband, is now also coming to an end in the country at large.
Holly ......
February 20th, 2012 9:27pm Report this commentMmmmm...Miliband???
That's the bod who thinks he's going to be the next PM...With Balls as Chancellor & Coop as Home Secretary.
Don't see it myself, but hey if it helps keep these idiots on the telly talking cr@p so be it.
HJ
February 20th, 2012 10:24pm Report this commentI wonder whether David Lindsey would mind translating his post into plain English?
dorothy wilson
February 21st, 2012 9:54am Report this comment"A week to get cancer tests done" - really? A friend of mine waited six months for her cancer tests to be completed. And that was under Labour.
David B
February 21st, 2012 1:46pm Report this commentReality - Politicians cannot guarantee anything and need to stop pretending that an Act of Parliament is some panacea to cure all the wrongs and perceived injustices in society. If it was we could legislate to stop car accidents killing children and muggings of pensioners in their homes, etc and we would have no crime, so would not need police or prisons.
The real issue in the NHS is too much political interference, which less face it started on the day it was created, and has not stopped since. Today the NHS is a national employment service in which the patent is an inconvenience to be dealt with. Until this mentality changes the NHS will remain as it is. Unfortunately there are too many vested interests in preventing any kind of change and Ed Miliband is hostage to most of them. That is why he needs these old gimmicks and tricks rather than suggesting real change
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