Earlier today I blogged about the odd and dangerous political situation the Liberal Democrats risk being left in – more in favour of the NHS Bill than large parts of the Conservative Party:
Arguing that you are the smaller party in a coalition and have achieved some important changes to a piece of legislation that has come from another party’s Secretary of State is one thing. But then ending up being keener on seeing the Bill go through than much of the Secretary of State’s own party? That’s skirting with political disaster.
Shortly afterwards (though I’m sure not as a result!), Shirley Williams took to The Guardian website to offer an escape route, both for the substantive policy issues and the politics of it:
I do not favour a complete abandonment of the bill, given the changes already made and the further changes that many peers, not least crossbenchers, are pressing for and hope to get. But these further changes are essential.
The way out of this mess is not hard to find. What is needed is willingness by the government, including the prime minister, to reach a compromise on the most contentious issues. These relate to competition, co-operation among providers (the two can conflict) and the need to ensure that in decisions where providers and commissioners may have conflicting interests, the interests of patients must have priority over profit.
What that would mean for the bill would be dropping the chapter on competition, and retaining Monitor as the regulator of prices and of the foundation trusts. It would also mean pressing ahead with decentralisation, and the involvement of the public and the local authorities through the new health and wellbeing boards…
Dropping the most contentious part of the bill, implementing quickly the parts that are agreed and giving priority to meeting the required efficiency savings would restore staff morale. Building on the all-party constitutional agreement reached in the Lords would do more: it would give the NHS the stability and confidence it so desperately needs.
You can read Shirley Williams’s article on the NHS Bill in full here.
* Mark Pack is Party President and is the editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire.
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14 Comments
Part 3 of the Bill is the worst part – the bit that injects private competition into the heart of the NHS. Shirley is, as ever, right, and removing Part 3 in its entirety would do the trick for those of us worried about this Bill.
The BMJ article she refers to actually says it would be best to drop the bill completely on balance. Any good elements, such as having clinician led commissioning through PCTs, could be achieved without legislation. I don’t think this offers a way out from the potential problems raised by Mark Pack, but just results in an even more confusing mess of a bill. Clegg has got this one badly wrong.
This does sound like a good idea. Let’s get the urgent stuff that everybody agreed on done, and come back around for another pass next year when there’s more time to get it right.
If the bill isn’t dropped then, and the lib dems vote for the remnants, then you’ll be destroyed for a generation. Public and professional opposition to the bill has hardened and anything less than a complete abandonment will be seen as a betrayal. Playing clever politics to preserve the coalition will be seen as putting short term political interests, and those lush ministerial limos, ahead of the preservation of the NHS and public opinion. A very foolish thing to do, even if ideologically you believe the NHS should be broken up.
Finally, this is a step in the right direction from Shirley and should be welcomed. If the DPM supports this position, it would be a good thing, but it doesn’t go far enough.
I posted this on another thread but it is cetainly pertinent here. However, I don’t know why many appear surprised by Nick Clegg’s outright support. After all, our leaders wholeheartedly supported the unreformed version…
From the FT….’Nick Clegg has reacted furiously to reports that three Conservative cabinet ministers have been lobbying against the government’s health bill, amid fears the issue could split the Liberal Democrats at their spring conference next month and destabilise the coalition…”“We have spent months getting our party into a relatively good place on this,” said one ally of Mr Clegg. “We are not going to keep them there if they think that this is open season on the health bill from the Tories and Tory cabinet ministers.”
“We are not going to keep them there”????? What sort of a comment is that? And, considering that the NHS bill was not, as far as I am aware, even in the coalition agreement how can this de-stabilise it?
Jason,
I guess Clegg is looking ahead to 2015, when the Tories are more likely to win an absolute majority than to win needing Lib Dem partners. He would then like Cameron to take him and his little group into partnership, even if Cameron is not forced to do so, To achieve that, he has to prove to Cameron that he is the ultimate loyalist, and that he can help with support against rebellions within the Tory party. So, while Shirley works to increase the influence of decent liberal democratic principles within government, Nick works to achieve the opposite.
This bill could never have got anywhere near the statute book without Liberal Democrat support. It would have been brought down in the Commons. Indeed, the Tories would not have had the nerve to introduce it. There was no mandate for it: Cameron and Lansley lied to the public, lied to the Liberal Democrats and lied to the British people about their intentions for the NHS. Apparently, Lansley had been crafting the destruction of the NHS as we know it for 6 years, but not a mention of it in the coalition agreement, just hogwash about no top down reorganisation and making the PCTs more representative: nothing about the abolition of the PCTs. Lansley lied to the Liberal Democrats about the NHS yet even so, you slavishly supported his reforms. This bill is not about patients’ interests, it is about the interests of big health providing companies. The only way that you can make recompense is by killing this bill now. If people want some idea of the vultures lining up to take advantage of what the Tories and the Liberal Democrats have done to the NHS I urge them to follow this link
http://www.redrag1.blogspot.com/
David Allen……. I voted for the policies put forward during the TV debates; where did they go? Two years into the coalition and we are still ‘just talking’ about tax cuts for the lower paid, higher taxes on pension contributions, air travel, expensive houses, LVT, closing tax loopholes, saving £billions in tax avoidance…(.and the, watered down, proposals to ringfence high street from investment banking has gone into the 2019 ‘long grass’)…..
Yet the Tory agenda of tackling the deficit by targetting the weakest in the country has rushed ahead, supported by Clegg, et al.
We are told there is ‘no alternative’ and ‘no money’ yet we have, like banana republics worldwide, money for speculative military intervention, ongoing spending on a ‘Trident replacement’, grandiose rail projects and an expensive ideological reorganisation of the NHS…
Cameron was devious; there was an inherrent mistrust of leaving the NHS in the hands of the Conservatives so, pre-election, Cameron repeated the lie that they wouldn’t do what everyone expected them to do. However, one of the first things to emerge post election was Lansley’s, six years in gestation, NHS bill. Now, even senior Tories view this bill as Cameron’s “Poll Tax” moment. No one forgave the Tories for the poll tax and, nailing our colours to this particular mast, is the surest way to alienate even more of our supporters…
It’s true that, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time”,( I fell for Blair’s promises in 1997 and for Clegg’s in 2010). However, I wonder if that maxim’s third premise will hold true…..
Jason: You say, “Two years into the coalition and we are still ‘just talking’ about tax cuts for the lower paid, higher taxes on pension contributions, air travel, expensive houses, LVT, closing tax loopholes, saving £billions in tax avoidance”, but in fact many of those policies have already seen action taken – e.g. the income tax threshold has gone up, some tax loopholes have gone, extra staff have been assigned to tackling tax avoidance, tax breaks for pension contributions have been cut (and also other measures you don’t mention, such as raising capital gains tax to bring tax on wealth more into line with tax on income). Of course not everything in the Lib Dem manifesto has been done, but then neither are we at the end of the Parliament yet nor in a Lib Dem majority government, both of which go some way to explaining that…!
Hasn’t Labour come up with anything new yet, instead of that old rubbish? Ministerial limos were one of the first things to be scrapped from most departments.
It is remarkably telling that they are still stuck so far in the past they believe those are still widespread. Now it’s just a couple of throwbacks like Eric Pickles running up bills for those.
Andrew Suffield, I thought it was a nice turn of phrase that represents just how principle has been seduced by power among Liberal Democrats. For the record, I’m not paid by Labour, not a member of the Labour Party and have even voted LD on several occasions.
Perhaps we should focus on the issue, which is the brazen rejection of past positions by Lib Dems once they joined the coalition and how this is seen by the public. Your opinion polling is dire compared with 2010, in Scotland the liberal democrat vote has collapsed and the portents for the local elections in May are not good. If you are seen to endorse the breakup of the NHS then you are likely committing political suicide, for what? Some of your ministers and MPs may get offfered a place in the Lords, unelected of course, but what’s in it for the wider party?
The official e-petition calling on the bill to be withdrawn now has over 120,000 signatures and must be debated in Parliament. Cameron and Clegg cannot ignore this fact, nor can they ignore the strength of public feeling on this issue.
The public don’t want this bill. The medical profession do not want this bill. This bill was not in either the Tory or LibDem manifestos, nor in the coalition agreement. Even some Tory ministers and MPs do not like the bill and think it goes too far. Yet Clegg pushes ahead, seemingly caring only about being in a place to enter coalition with the Tories again in 2015..
We were PROMISED this: “No top-down reorganisations of the NHS”. So why are we getting the opposite?
It’s time for our party to be on the side of the public and stand up for democracy. A bill that was in neither party’s manifesto, nor the coalition agreement and which the PM told us was not on the cards is a fundamentally anti-democratic bill. It’s time to stand up for what the public want. This is our party’s chance to redeem ourselves after the tuition fees debacle. Clegg needs to put his personal ambitions aside and stand with the party, the public, NHS staff and patients with this.
It is time to drop this unwanted, unpopular and unnecessary bill. Now.
@ Simon Bamonte
Hear! Hear!