The views of Irwin Nash on the government’s recently launched NHS consultation
Many campaigners will react with despair and disappointment to Wes Streeting’s “consultation” on the future of our NHS. The shadow Health and Social Care Secretary, who studiously avoided any engagement with campaigners or health unions before the election, is unlikely to take any more notice of them now that he is Secretary of State.
Surely, we don’t need such a convoluted way of engaging with staff. It is much better to restore the idea of ‘partnership’ that has been thrown away—and it is obviously hard to engage with staff you have just privatised.
And many people will also be instantly put off by the inflexible and very limited scope for individuals to answer the preset questions.
Perhaps more important is whether anyone really believes that the replies will influence what gets decided. Wes Streeting has already set out what he sees as the three fundamentals of the latest promised “ten-year plan” before asking anyone what they think.
It includes what seems suspiciously like a re-run of Lord Darzi’s old 2007 idea of concentrating primary care and other services in ‘polyclinics’, now rebadged as “neighbourhood health centres,” even though Darzi himself no longer calls for them, and despite the fact these same ideas were rejected by the public as undesirable and by most of the NHS as unaffordable.
Of course, any individual views will be outweighed by the huge power of the vested interests—Foundation Trusts, Royal Colleges, and private providers—increasingly owned by hedge funds.
Full article on The Lowdown, 31st October 2024