Over on his work blog, The Voice’s Mark Pack has written about how the health issue is likely to be handled at party conference:
The plan for the party’s autumn conference was straight-forward: talk up the party’s achievements in getting the Health and Social Care Bill changed, have a question & answer session to let people discuss but not disrupt the revised legislation and move on to talk about other issues.
That plan has been under assault, however, from health rebels within the Liberal Democrats who do not believe the changes have gone far enough.
You can read Mark’s post here.
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13 Comments
So if I am reading this correctly, LD Conference can discuss the bill, but not vote against it or make any further changes? What is the point, then?
And now it is revealed these new private companies, who will take over NHS services, will not have to be as strictly bound by the FOI act as the NHS currently is. Collection of vital (but politically uncomfortable) statistics on the NHS is being reduced by this bill, including information on waiting times. Private companies will now have much easier access to our medical records.
It is now abundantly clear that LibDem MPs value their jobs and the coalition more than the wishes of the public. The public voted for “No top-down reorganisations of the NHS.” The public did not vote for this bill. Every LibDem and Tory MP who voted for this bill have broken the pact made with the electorate. We were told the deficit would be cut, not the NHS.
And who will suffer the most? People such as myself, with long-term chronic and incurable ailments where there is no profit to be made out of. Thanks, LibDems, for aiding the Tories in killing the last thing in the UK we could be proud of.
This wasn’t in the manifesto or the coalition agreement and should therefore be fully debated and put to a vote!
Right now, it looks like those ‘pseudo-democracy’ that pretend to have elections but don’t let serious opposition candidates on the ballot.
Why “health rebels”? Lady Williams and Dr Harris represent, for me, the authentic voice of the Liberal Democrats. They are trying to stop the not-so-creeping privatisation and fragmentation of the NHS – in this they are magnificent. The LibDems and the Tories have no mandate whatsoever for what they are doing to the Health Service, and what they are doing is very unpopular with the electorate. It does seem that the LibDems (or those currently running the LibDems) have an electoral death wish. For me, far from being Health Rebels, Williams and Harris are HEALTH HEROES.
Erm. It was, at the Spring conference.
Unless we have become a party where anyone who disagrees with the leadership is a rebel then the above points are correct. The only people ‘rebelling’ against the party are those MPs and peers supporting legislation that is at odds with party policy.
And the legislation has moved on since the spring, so it is quite reasonable for there to be a further debate on what is a major piece of legislation on one of the most important issues to the public.
I am starting to wonder whether the Federal Conference Committee sees it’s role as enabling debate within the party based on what conference reps want to debate, or trying to calm dissent within the party to make conference more comfortable for the leadership.
Of course in attempting to do the latter it will almost certainly make any dissent louder and more hostile.
Perhaps. Certainly if people can show that there’s something new to be said. But despite all the noise, I’m not seeing anything that wasn’t being said in the spring. The suggested lack of democracy is clearly not real; a debate and a vote have happened.
Now, if there is genuinely something new here then I’m all for further debate on the issues. In particular, if Evan Harris has something new to say then I really want to hear it. But if falls to the people who want a debate to make the case, and I haven’t seen that happening. Still, they don’t have to make the case to me – Mark discusses several things which can happen.
Firstly, wonder about this alternative: maybe they examined the submission they were given, determined that it was substantially the same as the one given in the spring, and rejected it on that basis. I’ve got no idea what happened in this particular case, but other possibilities exist. I suggest that you might like to put in a question to the FCC at conference – I’m sure they’ll be willing to explain the reasons for their decision.
On the larger point, I can’t speak for them but based on what I’ve heard from them in the past, I’d say that they see their role as being presented with a number of hours of time to allocate in the main auditorium, which is fixed months in advance, and vastly more hours of debate proposals, and hence their task is to pick the best ones. That inevitably means that some good ones are going to have to be dropped. They’d love to schedule debates on everything people want to talk about, but they really can’t. There just isn’t enough time.
“if there is genuinely something new here then I’m all for further debate on the issues”
What’s new is that people like Evan Harris and Shirley Williams, who seemed reasonably satisfied two months ago with the changes they had helped to broker after the “pause”, have watched subsequent developments undermine that position. We have seen that while the political leaders say “read my lips – no privatisation”, McKinsey are stealthily planning for just that outcome. The BMA likewise have turned from grudging acceptance to opposition, having identified several administrative muddles which make the revised proposals worse than the originals. So we are in a totally new situation. The vote six months ago called for changes, which have since been in large measure accepted, and then discredited.
“There just isn’t enough time.”
Don’t worry, the media will allocate plenty of time for it, if the Conference hides away from a debate.
@Andrew Suffield:
There just isn’t enough time.
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I’m sure everyone, like myself, who relies on the NHS and is frightened of these “reforms” will kindly understand that the one party who could save the NHS simply didn’t have “enough time” to debate the most important reform of the NHS since it was founded.
Astounding. The success of the Coalition really is more important to most LibDems than the opinions of the electorate who, as shown in opinion polls, DO NOT want these reforms.
“Somebody else thinks it’s bad but no reason has been given” is not synonymous with “discredited”.
Making the case does not mean listing the names of people who opposite it for unspecified reasons. Every single time this comes up, it’s the same story: lists of names, and not one single problem with the bill is given. It’s almost enough to convince people that no problems exist.
Andew Suffield,
“not one single problem with the bill is given”
Dear Andrew, for your information, when I mentioned that McKinsey are stealthily planning privatisation of hospitals, I was describing what I believe to be a problem with the bill. When I mentioned administrative muddle, I was describing what I would consider to be a problem. But of course, you are at liberty to rebrand muddle as a clever new feature, and then slag me off for not talking about problems, aren’t you!
You believe that… the bill should prohibit a private organisation from planning things? Unacceptable, if true.
What has their planning got to do with the bill? No matter what it says, some private organisations are going to plan things that you don’t like. Even things which are explicitly made illegal by the bill but which they think they might be able to do without getting caught.
The bill bans them from privatising hospitals. Their planning is a waste of time and money which they are fully entitled to waste. This isn’t a problem with the bill.
This is at least relating to the bill, but it’s not identifying anything in the bill. It’s a vague fear – so vague that it is impossible to address. And it’s so hopelessly subjective that you could say this about any act already passed, without admitting any possibility of debate.
To be completely clear: no meaningful debate can occur unless somebody can identify an actionable issue with the bill – doesn’t have to be a fully worked out amendment, but it has to at least make it possible for somebody to write one to fix the problem. Anything which doesn’t accomplish this is empty rhetoric. The conference motion from spring is a good example: it was specific, setting clear goals for the government to act on, and it was acted on.
(Most of the commentators are doing this deliberately: they don’t want the bill fixed, they don’t care about what happens to the NHS, they just want to bash the government. Those people have no place in a debate; their contribution is merely sabotage and self-promotion.)
@Andrew:
Most of the commentators are doing this deliberately: they don’t want the bill fixed, they don’t care about what happens to the NHS, they just want to bash the government. Those people have no place in a debate; their contribution is merely sabotage and self-promotion.
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I surely hope you’re not talking about people such as myself: heavy users of the NHS who have seen it improve greatly over the past 13 years and have been watching it crumble for the past one year. As someone whose illness means I use the NHS on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis, I find it a bit cold that you make these wild accusations about critics of the bill. I DO care about what happens to the NHS and I despise this bill for many reasons which I’ve given on this site.
Your paranoia about people just wanting to bash the government is silly. You actually think that there’s nothing in the bill to object to so you bash those who do. I am a patient, not a customer. I want to be seen by the best doctors and nurses: not the cheapest or the ones my GP will think she’ll make a profit from. I don’t want my hospitals taken over by foreign countries. I do not want profit to come before my life.
The fact is that these reforms were not in any manifesto. Again I say we were PROMISED no top-down reorganisations of the NHS. And yet that is exactly what we’re getting. IMHO, LibDems are happy to ignore the public and medical profession, both of which don’t want the bill, in exchange for keeping this nasty government afloat.
And when LibDems lose many seats at the next election, your arrogance will still claim that we just “don’t understand” the bill or are just trying to bash the government. I’d be bashing this bill no matter who was doing it. I was very vocal about Labour’s mistakes with the NHS as well. I voted LibDem because I believed you when you said you’d protect the disabled and the NHS. Both promises your party has gone back on. And you call this democratic?
“It’s a vague fear – so vague that it is impossible to address.”
Go and read the BMA press release, they know infinitely more about it than you or I. Don’t suppose you take medical advice though, do you?