Unfit To Govern

A major rift opened up in the Coalition after Nick Clegg distanced himself from the Conservative’s health reforms under intense pressure from his party. Nick Clegg vows not to let the “profit motive drive a coach and horses through the NHS” after Lib Dem members call for a planned shake-up to be axed.

Hopefully this is just the beginning of a crack in the Coalition that continues to get wider resulting in a complete breakdown of the Coalition.

Telegraph – Nick Clegg in climb-down on NHS reforms

Well, it’s been interesting watching and reading the coverage of the first 100 days of the coalition.  Those that are pro coalition said how wonderful they were but I didn’t see any details of any good that had been achieved.  For those, like myself, who believe that the coalition is going to bring the country to it’s knees it was very easy to cite examples of poor government, blunders, arrogance and downright incompetence. Here’s a reminder of a few of these;

David Laws’s resignation. The new coalition government was plunged into its first crisis as the Liberal Democrat cabinet minister charged with cutting the £156bn deficit resigned following revelations about his expenses.

NHS reorganisation. Government has embarked on massive NHS restructuring, even though Tories said before the election that these restructuring exercises caused “terrible” disruption.  For further details see the UTG blog posts on this subject.

The Michael Gove fiasco of the cancellation of the ‘Building for Schools Programme”. Michael Gove should get the incompetence prize for the way he announced the cancellation school building projects. See UTG Blog posts.

The economy.  Despite many warnings Osborne and the coalition are bulldozing ahead with their cuts which is almost certainly going to result in a ‘double-dip” recession.  The plan relies on new jobs being created in the private sector to replace the 600,000 or more which will be lost in the public sector as a result of the cuts. Cloud cuckoo land.

Refusal of the £80m loan to Sheffield Forgemasters being challenged. Its chief executive said directors were willing to sell shares, contrary to what Cameron and Clegg said.

Capital gains tax. Coalition agreement said CGT would go up to rates “similar or close to those applied to income”, but George Osborne only raised it to 28%, not 40%.

VAT increases to 20% in January.  Despite the Lib Dems stating they were against a VAT rise in the run up to the election the Chancellor  announces the poor targeted inflationary VAT rise.

Stabilisation of Fuel prices ruled out. Back in the summer of 2008 Shadow chancellor George Osborne told the BBC the party was looking at plans to cut fuel duty when oil prices rise and increase it when prices fall. This has now been ruled out.  Another case of saying one thing in opposition and another when you get into power.

Abolished The Film Council. This is the body which promoted the British film industry and provided funding for many top British films.

No Crackdown on Tax Avoidance.  There has been a complete lack of any announcements regarding how the coalition is going to plug any of the Tax Avoidance loopholes.

Cancelling The Child Trust Fund.  Stopped this progressive idea which has been copied by other countries.

Scrapped the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) – the Commission’s latest (and last report) shows that even the modest measures that the previous government introduced to save energy and water and reduce waste have cut the state’s annual bills by £60m to £70m.  See UTG Blog Post.

Scrapping of ASBOs. Abandoning the whole ASBO system suggests the ConDems are returning to a  mentality where  police will only act after a crime has been committed.

Abolition of the Regional Development Agencies. This decision will once again centralise regional decisions in London reversing 10 years of gradual de-centralisation which is being adopted by other European countries.

Scrapping of ID Cards.  Political decision with no real rational behind it.  This will make it harder to catch criminals and terrorists than it would have otherwise been.  Also to illustrate the arrogance and  unfeeling nature of the Government they have refused to refund the relatively few people who have signed up for the trial.

Scrapping of Home Information Packs. This one affected me directly as it closed down my expanding business at a stroke without warning. This move alone increased unemployment by 3000 people with a total of 10,000 being affected. This was done without embarking on a 100 day consultation period which was promised prior to the election.  In doing we have returned to our old, slow and  inefficient house buying and purchasing system.

Announcing a spending review which will result in job losses of at least 600,000 in the public sector. All department (except NHS and overseas aid (why overseas aid)) have to find between 25 and 40% budget savings.  A conservative estimate puts resulting job losses at, at least 600,000.

The Abandonment of Regional House Building Targets.  Desperately need more housing, despite this the Coalition has abandoned targets which aimed to have 3 million more homes by 2020.

I really do hope we do not have 100 more days of the above.  Unfortunately I fear it can only get worse.  The polls indicate that at the moment it appears that it is possible to fool most of the people all of the time.

Further Reading: 100 facts about the coalition’s first 100 days, LabourList 50 mistakes series

Ex Conservative minister, Michael Portillo, said “I do think it’s all a leap in the dark” when asked about the NHS restucturing by Andrew Neil on Thursday night’s This Week politics show (BBC1).  He further went on to say that he thought the Government would have left health alone because there’s been enough restructuring over recent years and doesn’t know why GP commissioning should be better than the current system?

Andrew Neil pointed out that there was no mention of this in the Tory election manifesto.  Since then we have found out that the Government have set aside £1.7 billion for restucturing costs. Some estimates put these costs at between £2 & £3 billion without any real benefit to the patient. There is an interesting article from the Press Association here.

Many Tory voters must be wondering just what is going on.  Please also see my other post on this subject here where I suggest that the motive is privatisation by the back door.

I have just watched Prime Minister’s Question Time and once again I feel David Cameron has put in a lack lustre performance.  He really will need to improve his style if he is to win through when the going gets really tough as it surely will in the Autumn.

Consider these three points;

1. Why does the Prime Minister continually turn to the side or face the back when he is answering Harriet Harman’s questions?  He really will have to try and stand his ground, and look at the opposition in order to persuade everyone that he has confidence in what he says.
2. He (and the rest of the Coalition) needs to stop blaming the Labour Party for everything.  I believe the general public is sick of hearing this.  He and the Coalition need to accept responsibilty for Government, by actually answering questions rather than throwing a question back at the opposition or blaming them for the ‘mess’.  Their own ‘Office of Budget Responsibility’ has indicated that the mess isn’t as bad as they have been making out.
3. Why is it impossible to give a straightforward answer of Yes… or No?  When asked about whither suspected cancer patients could expect to see a Consultant within two weeks he simply couldn’t answer leaving us to make up our own mind what the truth is.  If he didn’t know the answer why didn’t he simply answer; “that the NHS would be failing cancer patients if they were not seen by a consultant in the quickest possible time necessary to make an early diagnosis, and if that meant within two then the answer was Yes”?

 I believe this may have been the last PM’s Question Time until Parliament returns early in September after the summer recess.  So, we will have to just wait to see if the style improves?

As Health Secretary Andrew Lansley announces his plans for the NHS as “one of the biggest shake-ups in its history” under the guise of cost reduction and patient care is it simply privatisation by the back door?

 Some of the relevant parts taken from speech in the House of Commons are;

•  we will allow any willing provider to deliver services to NHS patients
• we will phase out the top-down management hierarchy, including both Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts (by 2014).
• all NHS trusts will become Foundation Trusts – freed from the constraints of top-down control, with power increasingly placed in the hands of their employees
• …by giving local authorities the power to agree local strategies to bring the NHS, public health and social care together. Local authorities will also be given control over local health improvement budgets.
• We will give General Practices, working together in local consortia, the responsibility for commissioning NHS services, so that they are able to respond to the wishes and needs of their patients…….. With commissioning support, GPs collectively will lead a bottom-up design of services.

The full transcript of the speech can be found at http://bit.ly/bvsUq8

So what does this mean in practice;

• Foundation Trusts can raise capitol from both the public and private sector.  It is understood that the cap on the amount of revenue which can be obtained from the private sector is being removed.    So this means that an ‘NHS’ hospital can devote more of its resources to private healthcare especially if the budgets are squeezed to ‘save costs’. As the physical resources are finite this must reduce the overall resources available to NHS patients. (More info on what a Foundation Trust is can be found at http://bit.ly/bRiTPY )
• The idea of putting  GPs in charge of a large proportion of the existing NHS Trust budget is somewhat bizarre. It is stretching the meaning  ‘General’ to the extreme.  As if GPs haven’t got enough on their plate.  In practice they will sub-contract to private companies.  It’s been suggested that there is a hidden agenda – to allow private companies to buy out GP Practices.

So, is this not actuality part of the overall hidden agenda to privatise the NHS thus ensuring our taxes help to bolster the profits of private companies?