GPs warn the government: don’t cut NHS off at the legs
pharmafile | June 10, 2011 | News story | | Health and Social Care Bill, NHS reforms
The government’s beleaguered reform programme could amputate whole parts of the NHS and must be heavily amended if not fully retracted.
This was the message from a special Local Medical Council meeting of BMA members lead by Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of its GP committee.
“The government’s Health Bill is not even law yet and the current structures of the NHS are already collapsing all over the place,” Buckman said.
“The NHS isn’t just being cut to the bone, whole limbs are being amputated and on top of this, we have the Bill.
“If you cut the legs off the NHS, what happens? It falls over,” he said, and warned the government that it must rein in its reform agenda or risk the health service from falling over.
However, for all the rhetoric behind Buckman’s speech, the GPs in attendance decided not to hold a ballot against the reforms, and voted to wait and see what amendments the government is willing to make to the Health and Social Care Bill.
Possible changes will be announced next week by the Future Forum group, headed by professor Steve Field, which has been collecting responses from across the NHS on what changes should be made to the Bill.
The government has promised that the Forum’s report will be the basis of the amendments to its reform programme.
GPs given ‘little choice’ but to form consortia
The government’s reforms were set to replace primary care trusts – those responsible for the NHS budget – with groups of GP consortia. The Bill has stalled in Parliament but the changes are already going ahead on the ground, and pilot GP consortia already cover around 90% of England.
But Buckman said that GPs’ willingness to become pilot ‘pathfinders’ was not a tacit acceptance of the Bill.
“The government should be clear too, despite what they often claim, GPs joining consortia does not equate to GPs supporting the Bill – getting into lifeboats is not the same as supporting the sinking of the Titanic,” he said.
“A minority are supportive, yes, but the vast majority are taking part because they know they have no choice.
“They are joining in because they can see PCTs collapsing after a highly irresponsible laissez-faire approach to primary care planning.”
His speech was met with a minute’s long standing ovation from the crowd of GPs, who echoed his sentiment throughout the day.
Cameron’s pledge fails to reassure GPs
The meeting came in the same week that UK prime minister David Cameron made a five-point pledge on the NHS that included watering down the role of GPs in commissioning and restricting Monitor’s role of promoting competition in the health service.
The potential privatisation of the NHS was the most explosive issue at the conference and Cameron’s pledge failed to reassure delegates that the NHS was safe from competition.
Buckman said: “This week, the prime minister offered a welcome change to Monitor’s role so that they will be able to encourage integration – but he still has not taken away the duty to promote competition.
“I want politicians of every stripe to understand that we do not need competition to run the NHS,” he added.
Iona Heath, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, echoed Buckman’s concerns and noted that Cameron and his health secretary Andrew Lansley, the architect of the reforms, were conspicuous by their absence.
She ended her speech to the conference by saying: “It would have been nice if they were here to listen to the concerns of the very people they are aiming to install as the new NHS leaders, but unfortunately that is not the world we live in.”
Her comments were welcomed by rapturous applause and the second standing ovation of the day.
Ben Adams
Related Content
Hospitals on ‘brink of collapse’, warn doctors
Hospitals across the UK are struggling to cope with emergency admissions, and a doctors’ group …
Storm clouds gathering over the NHS, say its leaders
NHS managers are using their annual conference to criticise the government’s savings programmes. The government …
Risk register spells out NHS reform risks
A leaked document that assesses problems with the government’s reform of the NHS has been …
