By David Williams
20 January 2011
The coalition government’s proposed reforms of the NHS will leave councils ill-equipped to live up to their new public health responsibilities, shadow health secretary John Healey has warned.
Healey also said that the Health and Social Care Bill, whichwas laid before Parliament yesterday, was driven by an ideological belief in markets.Speaking to Public Finance this afternoon, Healey said that it made sense to put councils in control of public health because of the range of services they were already responsible for.
‘The central test is, will they get the powers and resources to do the job properly? There’s little in the Bill that convinces me that they can expect the powers they’ll need or the resources they’ll need.’
Healey added: ‘The fact that we have separate operational frameworks for social care, primary care and secondary care is not an encouraging sign that the government sees the importance of being able to co-ordinate effectively.’
In a speech to the King’s Fund in central London today, Healey condemned the reforms set out by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley as ‘not so much patient-centred as profit-centred’.
Healey argued that the reforms were essentially Conservative, calling the Liberal Democrats ‘helpless and hapless bystanders’.
He told an audience of health policy experts that Tory ministers believe competition drives innovation, price competition results in better value, profit motivates performance, and the private sector knows best.
The shadow health secretary also argued that the general aims of the Bill were ‘sound’, but that greater involvement of GPs in commissioning, increased patient choice and extending foundation trust status did not require a more profit-driven NHS.
‘I acknowledge the ambition but I condemn this as the core philosophy,’ he said.
