NHS reforms: amended plans are ‘car crash’, says Alan Milburn

Former health secretary says revisions to proposed reforms have ‘the makings of a policy disaster for the NHS and, maybe in time, a political disaster for the government’ Follow the latest developments in the NHS reforms live blog Alan Milburn, a former Labour health secretary, has described the coalition’s watered-down NHS reforms as the “biggest car crash” in the service’s history. Milburn, who is currently advising David Cameron on social mobility, said taxpayers faced writing “a very large cheque” as billions of pounds in efficiency savings would not be achieved as a result of “the screech of skidding tyres” caused by the government’s U-turn. Milburn, who stood down as Labour MP for Darlington at the last general election, used an article for the Daily Telegraph to condemn the revised health plans unveiled earlier this week following pressure from the Liberal Democrats and the health lobby. Milburn, who served as health secretary for four years under Tony Blair, wrote: “The government’s health reforms are the biggest car crash in NHS history. The temptation to elevate short-term politics above long-term policy proved too much for both David Cameron and Nick Clegg. “Many in both camps inside the coalition consider the U-turn a triumph. But it has the makings of a policy disaster for the NHS and, maybe in time, a political disaster for the government. It leaves both health policy and British politics in a very different place.” Milburn said Cameron was likely to be seen as more “protectionist” than either of his Labour predecessors, despite his insistence that the changes were pro-market. The promise of the coalition was that it would go where New Labour feared to tread when it came to public service reform. There would be no no-go areas,” Milburn wrote. “In fact David Cameron’s retreat has taken his party to a far less reformist and more protectionist position than that adopted by Tony Blair and even that of … Gordon Brown.” Milburn described the new policy as the “biggest nationalisation since Nye Bevan created the NHS in 1948″. Cameron had handed over control to “the daddy of all quangos”, the NHS Commissioning Board. The ex-cabinet minister said scrapping the 2013 deadline for giving GP consortiums control of commissioning would result in a “patchwork of decision-making for years to come”. Turning to the need to make £20bn of efficiency savings, he asked: “So how will the NHS books be balanced? By the usual device which policymakers have deployed every decade or so in the NHS: A very large cheque. “It was precisely the situation David Cameron and George Osborne were trying to avoid. Sorry George, but the cash you were saving in your pre-election budget for tax cuts will now have to be spent on a bail-out for the health service.” Milburn, who introduced a greater degree of private sector provision in the 2000 NHS Plan, said government backtracking on reforms presented an “open goal” for Ed Miliband’s Labour party. He levelled criticism at Labour for showing signs this week of a retreat into the “comfort zone” of public sector protectionism and threw down the gauntlet to the Labour leader to champion progressive radical reform. “It would be unwise in my view for Labour to concede rather than contest the reform territory,” he warned. “It now has an opportunity to restake its claim to be the party of progressive, radical reform.” NHS Health Health policy Public services policy Alan Milburn Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 16, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.