Mr Lansley’s UNclean Bill of health

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Andrew Lansley, Coalition, Conservative, Department of Health, Early Day Motion, EDM, government, GPs, health, Health and Social Care Bill, House of Commons, Information Commissioner, medical, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, mislead, NHS, Parliament, patient care, penalties, people, politics, privatisation, profiteers, right-wing, risk report, safeguards, Tories, Tory

Listening exercise: It must be hard for Mr Lansley to hear our concerns with his ear-warmers on.

I have trust issues when it comes to Andrew Lansley and his Health and Social Care Bill.

Mr Lansley swears blind that introducing competition will not only bring in better patient care, but will drive costs down as well.

The problem is, so much of the medical profession opposes it – including huge numbers of GPs, the people who are meant to benefit the most – that one has to be sceptical.

Also, if his Bill is so healthy, why is he – even now – refusing to publish the Department of Health’s risk report? This is the document that the Information Commissioner ordered him to release last November; according to the law (as I understand it) he is committing a criminal act by failing to publish.

I read today on the Green Benches blog that the report contains a very serious warning that Lansley’s changes will spark a surge in healthcare costs and that the NHS will become unaffordable as private profiteers siphon off money for their own benefit.

It may also warn specifically that GPs have no experience or skills to manage costs effectively.

This is a very serious matter. It means Mr Lansley – who has already criminalised himself over this, let’s not forget – could be attempting to mislead Parliament.

But let’s not get carried away. This is all speculation.

So, let’s make a constructive suggestion.

If Mr Lansley is so adamant that his Bill is going to be good for both patient care and the nation’s finances, let’s see him build a few safeguards into it.

Isn’t it time we asked what mechanism is built into the Bill to ensure that, if costs skyrocket and the quality of patient care plummets, Mr Lansley’s changes will be reversed, and the system brought back under control?

Isn’t it time we asked what penalties Mr Lansley himself will face, if the report is published after the Bill is passed and (as many fear) reveals exactly what the Green Benches blog mentions?

Isn’t it time the Tories made an effort to suggest they can be trusted to do the right thing for a change, instead of merely doing what’s right-wing?

There is also an Early Day Motion here which states “That this House expects the Government to respect the ruling by the Information Commissioner and to publish the risk register associated with the Health and Social Care Bill reforms in advance of Report Stage in the House of Lords in order to ensure that it informs that debate.”

Early Day Motions are formal motions submitted for debate in the House of Commons, but very few are actually debated. EDMs allow MPs to draw attention to an event or cause. MPs register their support by signing individual motions and I shall be calling on my own MP to support this one.

If you agree, go thou and do likewise.

Whatever happened to free speech?

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Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, Albert Einstein, Andrew Lansley, Christopher Graham, Coalition, Conservative, Department of Health, government, health, Health and Social Care Bill, Health Bill, Health Minister, Information Commissioner, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, National Health Service, NHS, Parliament, people, politics, propoganda, risk report, Secretary of State for Health, Tories, Tory

The Tory propoganda machine has been at it again – hushing up dissent to the, by now, pretty much universally-hated Health and Social Care Bill.

It seems Health Minister Andrew Lansley and his departmental colleagues have been on the blower to members of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. One presumes from the outcome that this was to assure them that releasing a statement opposing the Bill in its current form would be bad for their health.

The statement read as follows: “The medical royal colleges and faculties of the academy continue to have significant concerns over a number of aspects of the health bill and are disappointed that more progress has not been made in directly addressing the issues we have raised.

“The academy and medical royal colleges are not able to support the bill as it currently stands.

“Unless the proposals are modified the academy believes the bill may widen rather than lessen health inequalities and that unnecessary competition will undermine the provision of high quality integrated care to patients.”

The provisional plan had been to publish the statement late on Wednesday morning, ahead of Prime Minister’s questions.

But ministers led by Mr Lansley, along with senior officials, telephoned the presidents of the colleges ahead of its release, asking them to reconsider. We’re told the statement could have had a potentially devastating effect on the government’s plans.

Now it lies unused – another example of the methods Mr Lansley uses to stifle opposition to his unreasonable plan to privatise parts of the National Health Service and put taxpayers’ money into private operators’ offshore tax-haven bank accounts (as has been previously proved).

Remember the ‘risk report’ on the potential harm that would be caused to the health service if the Health and Social Care Bill becomes law? No? That’s because Mr Lansley still hasn’t published it, months after he was ordered to do so by the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham.

The Commissioner found the department twice broke the law by refusing to accede to two separate requests under the Freedom of Information Act to see the assessment. The Department of Health has appealed against these rulings; if the appeal falls, then its officials, and Mr Lansley, are criminals.

The BBC reported this story yesterday and the ‘comment’ column it provided instantly threw up a series of intriguing tangents.

One person, claiming to be a member of one of the colleges, stated that they voted on Wednesday, at an extraordinary general meeting, to come out in direct opposition to the Bill. The colleges’ leaders, by preventing them from doing so and not accepting that vote, were playing political games, in that person’s opinion.

Another commenter told us a decision against the Bill could still be made. It seems their daughter, a trainee public health consultant, was unable to attend the meeting at which the statement was discussed. She has been informed that her faculty is balloting all its members by post, according to its constitution and, if this is true, the results of the vote will not be known for another fortnight.

A third stated that the royal colleges had been intending to speak up to protect patients, from a position of specialist knowledge and understanding, but had been swayed from protecting patients and the NHS to protecting the government after Mr Lansley and/or his colleagues contacted them.

Back we go to the famous comment by Albert Einstein: “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

Like many others, I think the public needs to know what was said in those last-minute phone calls.

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