Allyson Pollock - one of my heroes - wrote this in the Guardian today. Please share it widely, which is why I quote at length:
Put simply, the legal effect of the [Health and Social Care Bill] is to abolish the statutory basis of a national health service by repealing duties to provide a comprehensive and universal service. The change is effected by creating clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) with an obligation to cover fewer services and responsibility for fewer patients and residents than primary care trusts (PCTs). Whereas PCTs act on behalf of the secretary of state, CCGs will exercise functions in place of him or her but without a clear primary legislative framework. The bottom line is that commissioners and providers in the new market will have freedom to select patients and services on financial grounds and to redefine eligibility for NHS care and in so doing introduce charges for care.
The blurring of boundaries and responsibilities for funding and provision will make it almost impossible for parliament to hold health bodies accountable for the various elements of their expenditure or for the secretary of state to carry out his or her duty to promote a comprehensive health service throughout England.
The key features of the bill are therefore the move from comprehensive, universal, geographical duties and the assignment of extraordinary discretion to CCGs and the NHS commissioning board. These elements are laid down largely in part one of the bill. It is vital that amendments focus in the first instance on clause 1, which deals with the existing duties of the secretary of state, and clause 10, which sets out the new powers of CCGs.
Reports of drastic cuts to NHS frontline services lie behind the extreme urgency with which the government is pushing its changes. Cuts on the scale envisaged are only possible if the duties laid on government by parliament are abolished. So it is the bill or the NHS; the people will rely on the crossbenchers to decide their fate.
We have to hope the argument against the Bill prevails. Lives, quite literally, depend on it doing so.
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Alyson Pollock is absolutely a hero and if only the grassroots LP had acted on her book ‘NHS plc’ to stop New Labour’s intentions for the NHS, we might not be in this current place with the Tory-LDs.
One of the only news sources, reporting her research, was Tribune magazine which is now faced with closure again. There is a call for donations in a last minute bid to create a co-operative but there is a very short window of opportunity.. the final decision will be made on Friday 28th October. Details for donations can be found on http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk or from: http://think-left.org/2011/10/25/help-save-tribune-magazine-from-closure-after-75-years/
It is disastrous that at a point when Tribune is needed more than ever, it is likely to fold.
Anyone whose read The Plot Against the NHS will also be aware of the threat’s to Alyson’s career that have emerged as a result of her work on various aspects of the privatisation of the NHS (e.g. PFI). She is an academic whose actions put many other academics to shame, not least those who work for so called think tanks that are no more than fronts for the promotion of greed and the interests of the wealthy elite.