Health secretary defends NHS reform to doctors
pharmafile | March 8, 2011 | News story | | GP consortia, Health and Social Reform bill, NHS, NHS reforms
Health secretary Andrew Lansley has defended his reorganisation of the NHS to doctors, saying it will cut unnecessary levels of management and cut costs in the long run.
Lansley said his programme of reforms will save the NHS around £5 billion by 2015, despite a high initial cost as the changes are put in place.
The health secretary was in a combative mood during a live webcast to British Medical Association members yesterday, and become notably irritated at several questions.
“The reforms are about removing the tiers of management,” he said. “During my seven years as shadow health secretary I was constantly told how the NHS was over-managed with a ‘ballooning’ in administration – we are looking to reduce this burden.”
He said that around 10% of the £20 billion in savings the NHS must make by 2015 would come from cutting out these “tiers of management,” replacing them with GP consortia who will effectively do two jobs for the price of one.
Lansley’s reforms will see groups of GP-led consortia replace primary cares trusts and strategic health authorities by 2013 when plans, currently in the committee stage in the House of Commons, are passed.
He said the reorganisation would initially cost £1.4 billion, but the savings derived from this expense would be £1.7 billion recurrently – representing a saving of around £5 billion to the NHS by 2015.
Responding to several questions as to whether GP consortia will be adequately managed during the transition, he said: “In the six months from when we came to power [in May 2010] we have cut 2,000 managerial jobs – or 34,000 down from 36,000.
“This is broadly the same as 2004/2005 levels and I don’t remember people throwing their hands up and saying, we’re woefully undermanaged.”
He also said that in the same period 2,000 more doctors had been employed and this was the “right thing for the NHS”.
Lansley said that any dissent coming from doctors was due primarily to “misapprehensions” of his reform programme and was at pains to clarify that the reforms were “based on evidence” rather than just politics.
At the publication of the government’s White Paper in July the BMA were broadly supportive of the reforms, but rank and file members have become more vocal in their concerns in recent months.
The latest member to speak out is Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the BMA’s hospital consultant committee.
Earlier this week he condemned the reforms as taking “the health service back to the 1930s,” when only around 40% could afford health insurance and no nationalised infrastructure was in place.
Last month a Freedom of Information request by False Economy, a trade union backed anti-cuts website, found that the NHS is poised to cut around 53,000 positions, including large numbers of doctors and nurses.
Ben Adams
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