Is our beloved National Health Service about to take a dive?
Or is it about the death of England?
Equity and Excellence Bill:
Liberating the NHS
I remember exactly when Aneurin Bevan¹ created the National Health Service yet there was misgivings about it at that time. I remember that certain rich people gave one or two guineas for the benefit of those that could not afford to give anything, I remember my parents paying a penny a week for the ‘Hospital Fund’ but whether that was a penny for each member of the family or for the whole family, that I can’t remember. I do remember quite distinctly that the elderly were afraid of being taken into the then hospitals. “I’ll only come out in a box if you take me in there” was the usual cry mostly from the elderly and sadly that was usually the way.
However, times change and from the hesitant start, the NHS started on its way from 5th July 1948 and we have been fortunate to have the advantage of being taken care of when we have been ill or had an accident “from the cradle to the grave”, a once famous phrase attributed to Aneurin Bevan, yet I understand it was in fact first used by Winston Churchill.
We now take our NHS for granted, it has always been “there” for us Sure it has changed and perhaps the “Waiting Lists” have got longer, but it has remained there for us all. It is there for illness, operations and accidents without any worry of where the money might come from. There are private organisations of course and people can join work’s schemes, or pay privately towards Private Health Care. There has always been that choice if you can afford it.
Now? How times change Eh? Sadly not for the better, at least, not when Governments keep signing EU Treaties without a “Nay or Yez” from the people.
We have been in the EU since 1973, so why, all of a sudden are we worried about our beloved National Health Service now? Ah yes, the Treaty of Lisbon with its deeper and more meaningful integration. Article 168² (ex Article 152 TEC)
1. “A high level of human health protection shall be ensured in the definition and implementation of all Union policies and activities. Union action, which shall complement national policies, shall be directed towards improving public health, preventing physical and mental illness and diseases, and obviating sources of danger to physical and mental health. Such action shall cover the fight against the major health scourges, by promoting research into their causes, their transmission and their prevention, as well as health information and education, and monitoring, early warning of and combating serious cross-border threats to health”.
Seven clauses in all, the last paragraph being; 7. “Union action shall respect the responsibilities of the Member States for the definition of their health policy and for the organisation and delivery of health services and medical care. The responsibilities of the Member States shall include the management of health services and medical care and the allocation of the resources assigned to them. The measures referred to in paragraph 4(a) shall not affect national provisions on the donation or medical use of organs and blood”. Nice of them to tell us!
Now why, all of a sudden after running the National Health Service for all these years, do we have to have the EU butting in?
A recent Article I sent round was from, “The Health and Social Care Bill” an important piece of Legislation the like of which, is so badly drafted, so ambiguous, I have never come across the like of such for a legal document in my life before. It of course could have been drafted in such a way for another that reason. When things happen which we do not like it could be said, “Ah well, it was all in the Bill” I simply do not know. One example here but many are the paragraphs like this.
Part 11 Miscellaneous. 853. Under this Part of the Bill, the Secretary of State would have the power to make schemes to transfer staff or property, rights and liabilities from one body to another as a result of bodies being abolished or created by this Bill. Schemes might make transfers of staff or property to a range of bodies, including for example local authorities, commissioning consortia, the NHS Commissioning Board, any public authority providing health services or a qualifying company11 . ( Far too ambiguous. “the Secretary of State would have the power to make schemes (what schemes? -some-thing that hasn’t been thought of yet?) to transfer staff or property? Which Staff? The rights and liabilities from one body to another? Which Body? The UK? To the EU? ETC, but you get the gist? And supposed they do not want to go? This Bill is a Minefield, it should be destroyed completely.
Explanation of a Qualifying Company. (above)
11 A qualifying company is a company wholly or partly owned by the Secretary of State and formed under section 223 of the National Health Service Act 2006, for the purpose of providing facilities or services to the NHS. Such a company could be used, for example, as an intermediate solution to hold Primary Care Trust property before it is transferred to either local authorities, providers or consortia. Section 223 is an existing provision and has been used by Secretary of State in the past to set up a number of companies to offer services to the NHS, such as NHS Professionals Limited, Bio Products Laboratory Limited and Community Health Partnerships Limited (the LIFT delivery company).
“The Equity and Excellence Bill: Liberating the NHS”, a Bill there is much controversy about, and which further changes might be made. As long as the NHS is funded from general taxation there will have to be public accountability via the Secretary of State to Parliament and the Public Accounts Committee will continue to scrutinise whether public money is being spent wisely. The Secretary of State will presumably be the person to whom local MPs and the public take their concerns when local services are closed.
I had already written four pages of my article on the NHS, which I set aside to send round that previous particular paper based on, “The Health and Social Care Bill” from which the second Paragraph from the Health and Social Care Bill reads as follows............
Purpose
2. “The Bill contains provisions on a range of policies. It contains 281 clauses over twelve Parts, and has twenty-two Schedules. The Bill is intended to give effect to the policies requiring primary legislation that were set out in the White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS, which was published in July 2010”.
Provisions for delegated legislation
3. “The Bill is not in general an enabling or framework Bill. It places a large amount of core legislation about bodies on the face of the Bill. This is consistent with the vision of moving away from the current system – where the Secretary of State has wide powers to confer functions on various NHS bodies and wide-ranging powers of direction over their activity – to a more transparent system, with reduced scope for intervention from the centre. The Bill confers functions directly on those responsible for exercising them. This entails spelling out in more detail than in the past what the remaining role of the Secretary of State in relation to those bodies is”.
9. “The White Paper, Equity & Excellence: Liberating the NHS sets out a clear vision for NHS autonomy: ‘Current statutory arrangements allow the Secretary of State a large amount of discretion to micromanage parts of the NHS. We will be clear about what the NHS should achieve; we will not prescribe how it should be achieved. We will legislate to establish more autonomous NHS institutions, with greater freedoms, clear duties, and transparency in their responsibilities to patients and their accountabilities. We will use our powers in order to devolve them.’ (Liberating the NHS, page 7.)
10. The Bill maintains the overarching duty of the Secretary of State, which dates from the original NHS Act of 1946, to promote “a comprehensive health service designed to secure improvement in the physical and mental health of the people of England, and in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness”. It distinguishes for the first time between healthcare and public health, laying the way for the new Public Health England. It also sets clear constraints on the Secretary of State’s ability to intervene in the NHS. End of Quotes. I tend to intertwine these two bills.
Going back now to the decimation of the National Health Service. Decentralization of the NHS, and no matter how we look upon it, it cannot possibly be called “A National Health Service” any longer, for it will be broken up into little pieces as in the Localism Bill. How can it be a ‘single Organisation’ giving its healthcare in a uniform way right across the Nation of the once United Kingdom? It cannot.
Can it work as an efficient Health Service broken up? Will one section deliver better than another? Will one section run out of funds quicker than another? Can such a once National Health Service, as we knew it, work efficiently at all ‘decentralized’?
Why on earth is this Government doing this in what many will see as deliberately destroying it instead of improving it by building on its well-established base? What is the point of splitting the NHS up into bite size pieces? I will ask what many of you would like to ask of all those that sit in our Houses of Parliament. Why are you all deliberately destroying your own Country, our way of life and our own Constitution?
It will cost more to split up the NHS with extra layers of bodies running it-in high places and fine ‘titles’-that will want paying-so what is the point of it all? It certainly cannot be because of lack of money. Without doubt if the EU cared about its alleged Nation States, they would not place so many impossible high fines on them, and if Governments did their own Governing they would not have to pay such fines anyway.
The Offices, the officialdom, the whole caboodle makes me wonder how on earth we managed our NHS without the ‘help’ of the EU for all those years? I grieve at all the money being spent-wasted- on extra Offices, extra personnel, all the extra rules and regulations touching on everything to do with our NHS and Hospitals. And why are we allowing the EU a say in OUR National Health Services?
I really get tad ‘fed up’ of how often the “older Generation” seemed to get blamed for living so long especially the money that is spent allegedly on them-well you could have fooled me-so where is MY money?
An Oral Statement on the NHS White Paper by the Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley was made on 4.4.2011, He said, “The NHS today faces great challenges:
It must respond to the demands of an increasing and ageing population, advances in medical technology and rising expectations;
- It remains stifled by a culture of top-down bureaucracy, which blocks the creativity and innovation of its staff; and
- It does not deliver outcomes in line with the best health services internationally – many of our survival rates for disease are worse than those of our neighbours.
The NHS must be equipped to meet these challenges – we believe it can do much better for patients. So today, I am publishing this White Paper, Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS:
- so that we can put patients right at the heart of decisions made about their care;
- to put clinicians in the driving seat on decisions about services; and
to focus the NHS on delivering health outcomes that are comparable with, or even better than, those of our international neighbours. For too long, processes have come before outcomes, as NHS staff have had to contend with 100 targets and over 260,000 separate data returns to the Department each year. We will remove unjustified targets and the bureaucracy which sustains them. End of quotes.
I see what is proposed as adding more bodies and legislation, costing ever more money that will not help one patient at all. In looking at the National Health Service we have had since 1948, which perhaps we have taken for granted, and looking at this Conservative Government’s proposals for it now, along side with the “Health and Social Care Bill” and then remembering also the Localism Bill all of which are designed to deliberately break up the Nation and Country of ENGLAND. To deliberately divide it up into bite size pieces and even perhaps set one group against another group and all this is being done by our own British Members of Parliament that we have elected and actually pay. But we have not and never will pay them to do something like this. We do not pay them to destroy our or their own Country, OUR COUNTRY of England and the NATION and people of ENGLAND.
Yes, they are following EU Legislation some of which may stem from EU Treaties ratified, ratified by a previous Government but without the agreement of the people that these Treaties affect. There comes a time when enough is enough and if we have voted into our Houses of Parliament people that will set about obeying EU legislation that is deliberately designed to destroy ENGLAND then they have absolutely no idea what the ENGLISH people are about, for this attempt at destroying our England will, as once before when ENGLAND and the ENGLISH was attacked will not “JUST LIE DOWN AND DIE, or decide or let foreigners decide any more what they want our British Government to do in the EU’s name. They bring deep shame on all.
There is no doubt what-so-ever that without paying the Billions of pounds, the extra millions it costs to remain in the EU, the massive EU Fines we pay, the extra costs the proposed changes to the three bills mentioned above, we would not be in so much debt now.
There is no point in having a British Government at all if all it can do is obey EU legislation and in the doing, destroy their own Country because that is what this legislation will do. These three EU proposals and/or others that may come along, must not take place for if they do they will bring the divided people of ENGLAND closer together, as an attack on their beloved England did once before. The English are a placid people until their “dander” is up. The British people in the last war fought a known enemy, they did not go through that just to allow strangers to destroy their Country another way and sadly, with the help of their own. My true and loyal allegiance remains as always to the British Crown. Anne Palmer. 6.4.2011.
An excellent site on the history of the NHS is on¹ http://www.nhshistory.com/shorthistory.htm
C 115/122 EN Official Journal of the European Union 9.5.2008² http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2008:115:0047:0199:EN:PDF
Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS
Health and Social Care Bill
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmbills/132/11132.i-v.html
NHS reduction in Spending on the NHS Dr Richard Taylor
Hansard
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmpubacc/uc875-i/uc87501.htm
NHS Foundation Trusts in the Health and Social Care (Community Health and standards) Bill. RESEARCH PAPER 03/38 29 APRIL 2003
The Yvonne Watts’s Case
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4985512.stm
Together for Health
The NHS Office in the EU http://www.nhsconfed.org/Publications/Documents/NHS_European_Office_Your_voice_in_Europe.pdf
24 pages of NHS in Europe
http://www.nhsconfed.org/Publications/Documents/Representing-the-NHS-in-Europe.pdf
Cross Border Health care in the EU
http://www.nhsconfed.org/Publications/Documents/Euro_Briefing_3190209.pdf
Mobility of Health Officials across the EU
http://www.nhsconfed.org/Publications/Documents/Euro_Consultation_Mobility_health_profs_europe.pdf
Preventative Health Care policies in the Council of Europe’s Member States.
http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc10/EDOC12219.htm
World Health Organisation (WHO) and UK
http://www.who.int/countries/gbr/en/
Health-EU Portal
http://ec.europa.eu/health-eu/index_en.htm
EU web-site on Health
http://ec.europa.eu/health/index_en.htm
Decentralisation of the NHS-A good readhttp://www.sochealth.co.uk/news/mutualhealthservice.pdf
Rationing Health Care in the UK. very good report
http://www.ukessays.com/essays/economics/uk-health-care.php
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/rp2003/rp03-053.pdf
Illegal immigrants could put our healthcare in jeopardy ,By Eric Waugh
Tuesday, 28 July 2009 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/eric-waugh/illegal-immigrants-could-put-our-healthcare-in-jeopardy-14435348.html
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