Pause, listen, engage and … push back. That just about sums up Andrew Lansley’s
article for the Sunday Express today, as well as the government’s general effort to reconstruct and repackage its shaky NHS reforms. Which
is to say, the Health Secretary makes sure to mix reassurance (“There is no more important institution in this country than the NHS”) with resolve (“The NHS is not some kind of
museum”) for his Sunday sermon. He dwells on the failures of the Labour years, particularly the proliferation of bureaucrats ahead of doctors and nurses. And he even suggests — although
one should always be wary of this sort of numerical soothsaying — that the government’s plans could save “an extra 750 lives from heart disease, 2,000 lives from respiratory disease and
5,000 lives from cancer,” each year. There is very little here that he might not have said before the government’s retreat began last week.
But there are one or two signs that Lansley’s position is altering. Where, for instance, he might once have stressed the extra responsibilities being handed to GPs, he now refers to “doctors, nurses and other health professionals making decisions.” Where he might have mentioned GP consortia, he now talks of “making all NHS services answerable to locally elected representatives.” Subtle shifts in emphasis, perhaps. But they do fuel the sense that the government might move towards the recommendations made by the Health Select Committee earlier this week. That would certainly involve “serious and substantive changes,” as the Lib Dems are calling for. But whether the Lib Dems would see it that way is another question entirely.
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