Sanctimonious hypocritical rubbish from Labour on the NHS

I read this piece on LabourList today from a Labour candidate in Brighton and I am afraid I couldn't help myself but post a somewhat ranty response in the comments below it.

I thought I'd reproduce it here seeing as it's the longest thing I've written in a while!


What an absolute load of sanctimonious tribalistic rubbish. You didn't "rebuild" the NHS in 1997 and you won't need to "rebuild" it in 2015. It was perfectly functional when your party came to office in the 1990s and will be so next year if you win.

Your comments about cuts should be seen for what they are - hypocritical. The current government has ring fenced NHS spending against their cuts. Tiny rounding errors where money is either not spent in an area or rolled into the next year are screamed about by your party as "CUTS"! But your party made no such pledge about ring fencing the NHS so the readers can draw their own conclusions about what would have happened had you won in 2010.

The administrative problems you refer to regarding the closure of a GP surgery in Brighton is the sort of thing that happens under all governments not just this one. There were loads and loads (and loads) of admin issues under Labour. I remember Tony Blair getting an absolute roasting from a BBC Question Time audience during the 2005 general election campaign when one audience member highlighted how they could not book an appointment in advance and had to ring on the day first thing in the morning when they could often not get through. Blair said he was sorry and it must be particular to that one surgery at which point many more people in the audience spoke up about how they had exactly the same problem across a variety of surgeries. I myself had experienced it too. It was systemic. It was still happening late in the previous parliament when Labour had had over a decade to sort this out. Was that SAME OLD EVIL UNCARING LABOUR??!!! or is it simply that a massive bureaucratic service like the NHS is by definition very difficult to manage and when you have all sorts of targets (some of which contradict each other) administrative failings like this are inevitable. It's nothing to do with the party or parties in power usually. It's just the nature of complex systems.

Your party might have been in power when the NHS was founded but there was a clear pre-war consensus that something like it was going to happen and the Beveridge report which was the foundation of the NHS was produced by a member of the Liberal Party. Your party does not own the NHS like so much of your rhetoric and this piece would imply. It is owned by all of us. And it is not just Labour members and voters who care about it. We all do.

And finally, this is probably a controversial point because Cameron himself has unwisely referred to the death of his son probably too many times in this context but to suggest as you do that Cameron personally does not understand the value of the NHS is simply factually incorrect. Anyone who has had a sick/terminally ill child understands intuitively the value of it. It is very unwise of you to suggest otherwise.

House of Comments - Episode 84 - Universal Discredit

Episode 84 of the House of Comments podcast "Universal Discredit" is out. Myself and Emma joined by the editor of The New Statesman blog The Staggers George Eaton to discuss the latest Universal Credit debacle, the NHS A&E crisis, the latest on an EU referendum, the ending of shipbuilding in Portsmouth and whether there's a link to Scottish independence and finally oversight of spending on the monarchy. Warning - contains republican ranting.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 84 - Universal Discredit’ on Audioboo

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us. We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

House of Comments - Episode 46 - The Future of the NHS

Episode 46 of the House of Comments podcast "The Future of the NHS" was recorded on Sunday and is out today. This week myself and Emma Burnell were joined by Guardian writer Ellie Mae O'Hagan to discuss Chris Huhne's resignation and the ensuing Eastleigh by-election, the future of the NHS in the light of the Francis Inquiry into the failings at Stafford Hospital and the reduction in benefits based on rooms in houses that I refuse to call the "bedroom tax"!

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 46 - The Future of the NHS’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

An appeal for the NHS

Now that the dust has settled a little bit on the NHS reforms I have a request.

I tried to pay close attention to the detail of what the changes mean as the bill was going through parliament. Lord knows we had enough coverage at the time (although there was often much more heat than light I fear). As far as I can tell the changes are fairly modest and essentially involve more devolution of power to local GP practices and some extension of private providers running NHS services (which was also done by previous administrations). Everything that was free at the point of use before will still be free at the point of use and again as far as I can tell the NHS budget has been protected (albeit there will be some efficiency savings with the money ploughed back into the NHS budget).

So, can someone please tell me, with links to evidence, how the NHS is being "abolished" or "destroyed". I have seen many people claim this, often Labour activists but I have never seen proof of it, or even a convincing prima facie case.

Just in case anyone here thinks I am being provocative, I am not. I am genuinely asking. I am a member of one of the parties in government in this country and if I really thought that my government had enacted a bill that would end the NHS and free at the point of use healthcare, I would leave the party and vigorously campaign against it.

So I am appealing for someone to prove to me that these claims about the NHS being destroyed are true.

Anyone?

Why are Labour opposing what they did in office?

I know politics tends to be played in a certain way and that Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition are there to oppose. It's there in the title.

But it is remarkable just how many times Labour in opposition are now against almost exactly what they did when they themselves were in office. In some cases not just against them, but viscerally against them suggesting all manner of nefarious motives on the part of the EVIL CONDEMS for even considering them.

There's a good example today. It has been reported that the government is encouraging the NHS to use its expertise globally in order to make a profit from international markets for re-investment domestically. Sounds perfectly sensible to me to explore such opportunities, especially with a brand that is as strong globally as our National Health Service is.

Labour however have wasted no time at all in attacking the plans. Which is very odd because only 2 years ago, Andy Burnham, the then Labour Health Secretary was all in favour of pretty much exactly the same idea:

“A key part of responding to the economic challenge that the NHS faces will be realising the full potential of innovation, not only making effective use of our knowledge and skills at home, but also making money abroad that can be reinvested back into the NHS."

The Labour attack is based around this being the "wrong time" for such a change and that the "priority" should be sorting out the "mess" in the NHS. But If Burnham 2 years ago, in the midst of an economic crisis thought then was the right time for this and that it could form a "key part" of the NHS's economic challenge then I cannot for the life of me work out why now is the wrong time. Surely Labour think the NHS has got worse in the last 2 years so anything that can bring more money in for reinvestment (as they clearly thought this would when in office) should be a good thing?

This apparent contradiction has been reported widely today and I have seen a few Labour activists make an attempt to defend the new position usually along the lines of the "approach" that the current government is taking being wrong.

Frankly this is a load of rubbish. It is becoming ever more clear that Labour are going to oppose anything and everything that they think they can get political capital out of regardless of how hypocritical they are being. The theory seems to be that if they shout loudly enough against all these policies, the fact they used to be for them will be forgotten. They should be held to account for this, otherwise how are we going to know what we'll get if they end up back in government again?


Andy Burnham being interviewed about this subject today:

Why is leaving things alone never an option?

Michael Gove has been sticking his oar in in recent days. He's decided that he wants children to start learning foreign languages from the age of 7. Also he's announced that he wants 5 year olds to recite poetry to each other in class.

I'm not going to dwell on the merits or demerits of these specific proposals. Except to say that if there was strong evidence that these things would increase the wellbeing of British children I suspect it would have been done a long time ago.

What I'm more interested in today is what this says about how governments approach governing.

Gove is an intelligent man. I know this because he used to sit on the Newsnight Review sofa regularly and intellectually spar with the likes of Germaine Greer and Paul Morley. And also I sometimes didn't know what he was on about. OK, maybe that just makes him more intelligent than me. We'll draw a veil over that.

But what makes him think that he knows best about how to micromanage the national curriculum for everyone in the country? The answer is quite simple. He is a politician.

Politicians have to do something. Anything. It's how they get elected. It's no good them standing for election and saying "Vote for me and I'll leave things pretty much as they are.". They'd be vilified by their opponents and would be a laughing stock. Politicians get elected by promising to change things.

But the consequence of this is that things keep getting changed all the time whether that's a good thing or not. Labour embarked on goodness knows how many sets of reforms of the NHS. I think it was at least 3 in 13 years. Now the coalition is at it all over again. Schools have had lots of fiddling in recent years too. Curriculum changes, Key Stages tweaked and meddled with, targets, league tables, new powers, powers taken away, Academies, Free Schools, tighter Ofsted regime, slackening of Ofsted regime etc. etc. etc. And that's just two departments in the last few years. The same pattern is repeated all over government.

Here's a thought. What if we just left things largely alone for a bit? Maybe if we allowed things to settle down, for doctors, nurses, teachers, managers etc. all to get used to the latest way of doing things for say 5 (or shock horror 10) years perhaps we might find performance improving. You know, because so much time and money wouldn't need to be spent reorganising everything every 3 years.

Of course this is fantasy land. But it is worth pondering why we demand politicians always have to campaign on a platform of major change. Because until we allow them to be more reasonable and sometimes say things like "In this area we're doing OK and we propose no major change" without shooting them down in flames we will keep getting these huge shake ups right across all departments.

But if we did this then Gove would have to go back to debating the work of Gilbert and George with Greer and Kirsty Wark.

That's a price I'd be willing to pay.....


This post was first published on Dale & Co.

Telegraph fundamentally misunderstands how the Lib Dems work

The Daily Telegraph had a rather forthright leading article yesterday entitled "Political failure has scuppered NHS reform". In it they took both David Cameron and Nick Clegg to task for having given in to pressure on the NHS reforms and regretted how in their view the essence of the original bill now "lies in ruins".

But the bit that leapt out at me was the section where they specifically criticise the Lib Dem leader:

Mr Clegg has pulled the plug on a set of proposals he was happy to go along with until his activists told him otherwise. That was a failure of leadership.

This is how a healthy political party is traditionally supposed to work isn't it!? The members who make up the grass-roots footsoldiers vote on and decide the policies. That's how Labour used to work. The Tories have always been much more top-down but I know many Tory activists who lament the fact that they are unable to decide on their own policy.

Irrespective of the other parties that is always how the Lib Dems have worked. It is one of the things that attracted me to the party in the first place, that I could have a real say in policy. And in this case it was a vital part of the way government policy has been altered. The coalition agreement was sketchy on the detail for the NHS and the recent Lib Dem conference made it very clear what the party in government needed to do to satisfy the party at large.

To attempt to characterise this as a "failure of leadership" by Nick Clegg is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the party that he leads. Other parties may impose policies from the top. The Lib Dems do not.

I think many people will start to realise this following the changes to this bill and perhaps some will consider it to be a much more democratic way of deciding a party's policy than it being cooked up by a cabal in Westminster.

Can we be sensible about the 137,000 NHS jobs report?

A big story is breaking right now. Paul Waugh has the initial details. Apparently the government has commissioned "blue skies" reports on how to cut costs and one on the NHS from McKinsey and Co has leaked.

Already there are accusations flying around and the government seems to be trying to spin that the report's author worked as an adviser for the Tories. Conservative HQ is denying it. Guido has done one of his +++++++++++++++++ blog posts on the story and has indicated there will be more later.

Now I don't know what is going to come out about this but it has all the makings of a one of these febrile political situations that is going to get blown up out of all proportion with both Labour and the Tories terrified of being associated with "MASSIVE NHS SPENDING CUTS".

Can I just make a plea for everyone to be sensible? Surely we want the government to commission reports like this to see what can be achieved? It doesn't necessarily mean all those jobs will go but we have to start identifying where public spending can be cut. It has to happen otherwise we will be in dire economic straits in the near future.

I await the details with interest but I expect I will be grateful that they are trying to be sensible about budget planning for the future even if I am still irked at Gordon Brown for trying to pretend spending reductions are unneccessary. I hope he will not be trying that one on any more.

I would be more worried if the government just buried its head in the sand and did absolutely nothing.

Daniel Hannan's opponents are using playground tactics

Tory MEP Dan Hannan is in trouble again.

In an interview with reason.tv (an internet TV channel) he cited Enoch Powell as one of his political influences stating that he:

Understood the importance of national democracy, who understood why you need to live in an independent country and what that meant, as well as being a free marketeer and a small government Conservative.

Of course the reason why Mr Hannan's remarks could be construed as contentious is because of what Enoch Powell is so famous for, his "Rivers of blood" speech in 1968 which did much harm to race relations in the UK. It also comes hot on the heels of his comments about the NHS (although the reason interview was actually conducted before he made his NHS remarks - they have only just come out now).

But what he says is true. Powell was all of the things that Hannan claims, and frankly given Powell's visceral opposition to the European Common Market and Hannan's visceral opposition to the EU, it's successor, it's hardly surprising that he considers him an influence. Indeed it would be odd, and he would be pretty obviously lying if he claimed otherwise.

None of this matters to Hannan's political opponents though who have leapt upon this latest revelation with absolute glee. Here's Lord Mandelson:

Yet again, we are seeing the two faces of the Conservative Party. The one they want to present to the public and the one which attacks the NHS and praises Enoch Powell.

I have seen plenty of similar reaction on Twitter and elsewhere from all sorts of levels within the Labour party.

The reason I despair here is because of what episodes like this do to politics in general. People often compain that most politicians are like automatons who rigidly stick to a predefined script and don't say anything interesting. That's because of what happens when they step outside these ridiculously defined bounds that the political class as a whole sets themselves.

Why should Mr Hannan not be allowed to be honest about who his political influences are? He is not saying he agrees with everything that Powell said and did. He has been very specific about what he admires in Powell and there will be many in the Conservative Party (and also some across the political spectrum) who actually agree with him.

In fact, here are some comments from Prime Minister Tony Blair after Powell died in 1998:

He was one of the great figures of 20th-century British politics, gifted with a brilliant mind

Does that demonstrate the two faces of the Labour Party and of Mr Mandelson's protege?

Time and political debate would be better spent by his opponents arguing against what Dan Hannan believes and the reasons for it. Not trying to smear him by association when he is just being honest about the formation of his political views.

Of course that would involve detailed discussion and debate and is more difficult and nuanced than the sort of response Peter Mandelson has put out.

I should probably end by making it clear that I hold no candle for Daniel Hannan. There are things he thinks that I strongly disagree with. However I also think he makes a good contribution to debate in this country and our politics is richer for having people like him involved in it.

The playground tactics being deployed in this latest spat however make me wonder how much longer people like him will bother, and the march of the automatons continues unabated.

NHS debate - Daniel Hannan has not been clear enough

Well as usual when I go away for a few days there is a big story that I have come back to and have had to properly catch up with. This time it is the whole NHS debate kicked off by Obama's attempts to get healthcare reform proposals on the table in the US and brought into sharp focus in the UK by Daniel Hannan's disparaging comments about the NHS on Sean Hannity's show on Fox News (see below for embedded version) combined with the "#WeLoveTheNHS" Twitter campaign.

Allied to this and coincidentally, as part of my holiday reading I read "The Plan" by Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan, one chapter of which is devoted to the NHS and how it could be reformed so I have detailed insight into Mr Hannan's thoughts in this area.

As far as I can tell there has been much more heat than light in the "debate" on this so far. As Fraser Nelson points out on the Spectator blog today it has largely been mud slinging. It seems like the left is using this as an opportunity to bash the Tories supposed "real views" about the NHS, despite David Cameron's many on the record pledges to the contrary.

I have to say though, having this morning watched Daniel Hannan's appearance on Hannity's Fox News programme he largely has himself to blame. He spends much of the interview decrying the NHS and urging the US not to go down the "socialist" route that the UK has done. He also spends time pointing out (quite legitimately) some of the failings of the NHS. The problem is that at no point during the interview are any of the shortcomings of the US system even discussed. This is partly due to the ridiculous bias of Fox News in general and Hannity in particular who does not frame his questions like this or even play devil's advocate in order to test Hannan's views. But it is also Hannan's own fault for not taking the opportunity in an almost 7 minute interview to spell out what he thinks should happen.

Douglas Carswell has been complaining on his blog about how Hannan's views are not being represented correctly but he did not do so himself!

I will have a crack at briefly outlining the position described in "The Plan" which I presume is what Daniel Hannan thinks in detail is what should happen with the NHS. The chapter explains the shortcomings of the NHS but it also points out some of the failings of the US system, specifically that it is "burdened by too much litigation, regulation and producer capture. We can do better". It then goes on to describe how Singapore's health system works which revolves around a system of health savings accounts. Apparently they have better health outcomes than many European nations but it costs less than half (in GDP terms) what we pay in the UK. There is discussion of how this leads to Singaporeans generally making healthier life choices because it is ultimately their money they have saved that will be spent (or not and hence available for other things or once a threshold is reached no more payments needed). Also, catastrophic health care insurance is used to cover major problems that cannot be covered by the savings. There is then discussion of how a safety net could be applied in the UK to ensure that health care is available to all in a similar way to the NHS currently.

Hannan could have summed this up using his prodigious rhetorical skills in less than a minute on Fox if he had wished. He chose not to instead giving the impression that the US system is the one he favours when he manifestly does not. For the Tories to now complain that the left are misrepresenting him is to miss the point that Hannan has made it very easy for them to do just that and a great opportunity for the interesting ideas in "The Plan" to be more widely debated has been missed.

From my perspective, I think there is merit in "The Plan" idea for health care reform. As Charlotte has pointed out, it does not sound a million miles from what was proposed in the Orange Book a few years back by David Laws where an insurance based system would be used and the patient chooses the provider. That achieves similar ends (proper patient choice) through a slightly different mechanism. I know the contents of that book are the subject of debate within and outside the Lib Dems but my view is that alternatives need to be sensibly considered and I cannot see how the NHS in its current form can continue for the next 60 years. We have to properly debate reform.

Sadly it looks like it aint going to happen this time around. Advocates of reform need however to be much more clear in future to make it harder for their opponents to misrepresent their real views.

Perhaps Mr Hannan could bear this in mind the next time Mr Hannity invites him onto his show as he doubtless will. It may not be exactly what Fox News wants to hear but he should be unafraid to fully state his position.