Justin Madders is Shadow Minister for Secondary Care, Workforce and Patient Health and is one of the 17 MPs (5 are Labour) involved in the line by line scrutiny of the Health and Social Care Bill in its committee stage, before it returns before the house on 22 November.
A pandemic, a burnt out workforce, record waiting times – pressure in every part of the system. The NHS is stretched to its absolute limit and beyond, yet against this background the Government have put forward the Health and Care Bill which represents yet another reorganisation of the NHS that fails to tackle the underlying causes of the challenges both health and social care face.
In simple terms, the Bill removes competitive tendering for clinical services (but not all NHS funded services); it replaces Clinical Commissioning Groups with bigger ICBs (which are expected to delegate to ‘place-based’ units of some sort); it replaces market structures with heavy top down management by a much enhanced NHS England. The big winners as always are the large acute trusts.
Full article in The Lowdown, 15 November 2021