Letter

The bland reporting on the bland?

Dear healthmatters —Your articles in issue 22 reviewing Labour’s health policy show a remarkable lack of analysis and a bland acceptance of a bland document. Why is it that commentators including yourselves have supported the concept of ‘little change’ to mean a sound policy. For me this equals virtually no policy.

It is no good hiding behind the argument that people are fed up with change and so it should be ‘steady as she goes’. What people are fed up with is change that hardly anyone agrees with, change that is designed to undermine rather than underpin the NHS, change that seems to be going nowhere. Change that addresses major problems even if it means a radical overhaul should not be avoided.

What amazes me most of all is how the left in general seems to have accepted the purchaser/provider split. Never was there such an irrelevance and it should be abolished immediately. It has added bureaucracy with huge purchasing consortia very remote from staff and users, it has added unnecessary costs to the NHS and the structure it has created is unaccountable, lumbering and has added unnecessary, unhelpful friction between people actually providing a service and those who are supposed to be buying it.

There are many, many gaps in the Labour party document - whatever happened to the pledge to abolish charges for eye and dental check ups; what about the commitment to freeze and reduce other prescription charges; where is there any commitment to provide secure and increased funding for the NHS? The proposals for accountability by having possibly the chair of social services on health authorities are very weak; why is there no consideration of a salaried GP service - something that GP’s are crying out for? The proposal for a Royal Commission on community care (not just for elderly people as you suggest) will lead to a paralysis in planning for years.

It is disappointing that there is a such a paucity of radical thinking in relation to the NHS while organisations such as Healthcare 2000 are able to catch the headlines with a document that undermines the fundamental principle of universality which underpins the NHS. I hope that healthmatters will probe a little deeper in future.