Author Archives: K B

Opinion: A radical, Liberal and localist alternative to NHS commissioning

By K B | Mon 13th October 2014 - 5:54 pm

nhs sign lrgLast week at Liberal Democrat Conference in Glasgow the party amicably and democratically settled one of its longest-running disagreements, about the way in which NHS services should be commissioned.

This is a subject Liberal Democrats need no introduction to. It has been a thorn in our side ever since Andrew Lansley first published his White Paper, “Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS” (2010), and culminated in Conference’s refusal to endorse the policy in Gateshead in 2012, instead neutering the so-called “Shirley Williams amendment”.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 14 Comments

Opinion: What Andy Burnham didn’t tell you about NHS privatisation

By K B | Sun 17th August 2014 - 8:45 am

nhs sign lrgAndy Burnham’s recent set-piece speech on the NHS, the latest instalment of Labour’s “summer offensive”, opened with a neat bit of scene-setting. By briefly championing a group of Darlington mothers who are presently marching 300 miles in protest at the use of private providers in the NHS, he conjured a mood of protest while subtly co-opting their campaign. Thereafter he sought only to reduce the 2015 general election to a “binary choice” between “a part-privatised, two-tier health market under David Cameron” and “a public, integrated national health and care service under Labour.”

In terms of how he defined that choice, though, Burnham could hardly have done worse than to frame his argument with an example from Cambridgeshire, singling out for particular criticism its attempt to integrate care services for older people.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , and | 74 Comments
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Recent Comments

  • cim
    @David Allen I think the key - for electoral communications, at least - is to skip the description of the process entirely and go straight to the outcome. Yo...
  • David Warren
    The last sentence sums up it for me. We are getting squeezed out in the majority of constituencies and the beneficiaries of the progressive protest vote are the...
  • Alex Macfie
    "those on the left don’t tend to see individuals but see people as members of identity groups," so do many on the Right, using "identity groups" to divide peo...
  • Jana
    My son-in-law is a police officer. He tells me that there is no point arresting shop-lifters as they always get bailed and will be shop-lifting again within the...
  • Jason Connor
    Well done for putting in the effort in an inner London constituency, and showing how it can be done. There have been similar issues in Greenwich where the rulin...