Milburn adds his voice to growing disquiet on NHS reforms

pharmafile | March 30, 2011 | News story | |  Alan Milburn, NHS, NHS reforms 

Former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn has come out against the government’s health reforms, adding to the chorus of voices against the reorganisation of the NHS.

The reforms aim at putting GPs in charge of the NHS budget whilst abolishing the current management structure, but Milburn said this is shortsighted given the challenges of finding £20 billion in efficiency savings by 2015.

“There’s a chasm between the cost of making change and the cash available for it,” he said in an article for The Guardian.

“Cutting waste is a good idea, but it’s a bad idea to assume that NHS structural change saves cash rather than costing it.

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“Abolishing primary care trusts and creating more GP consortia to replace them hardly sounds like a recipe for reducing bureaucracy.”

He agreed that allowing family doctors to own the financial consequences of their prescribing, treating and referring decisions was a positive step forward.

But he questioned the ability of GPs to do the “complex business” of commissioning local services.

He also warned that having GPs in charge of over £80 billion of public money would “weaken public accountability”.

Milburn believed it was right to remove politicians from of day-to-day NHS management, but he was against “moving power sideways” to the new NHS Commissioning Board.

Instead Milburn believes it should be moved downwards to where health decisions are taken.

Milburn was reportedly approached by the government to apply to be chairman of the Commissioning Board.

The Health Service Journal said he turned the offer down earlier this month because of his concerns about the direction of the reforms.

Labour to ‘skillfully oppose’ reforms

Milburn said that Labour should not simply fight the coalition on all points, but rather “skillfully oppose” the more damaging elements of the reform.

“Opposition to change is always easy. But it would be unwise for Labour’s stance on the government’s proposals to suggest we are conceding rather than contesting the reform territory.

“The government’s changes provide an opportunity for Labour to restake our claim to be the party of progressive radical reform.

“It is only when we are that we win,” he concluded.

Milburn’s comments come during a tough month for heath secretary Andrew Lansley, whose reforms have so far been attacked by the BMA, the NHS Confederation and the Liberal Democrats.

Ben Adams

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