Labour councils are ‘last line of defence’, says Miliband

2 Apr 12
Ed Miliband has launched Labour’s campaign for next month’s English local elections by promising that the party’s councils will act as the ‘last line of defence’ against the government’s ‘damaging’ NHS reforms.

By Richard Johnstone | 2 April 2012

Ed Miliband has launched Labour’s campaign for next month’s English local elections by promising that the party’s councils will act as the ‘last line of defence’ against the government’s ‘damaging’ NHS reforms.

The Labour leader said that Prime Minister David Cameron had ‘betrayed all his promises on the NHS’ by reorganising the health service in the Health and Social Care Act.

This will lead to the abolition of primary care trusts, which will be replaced with clinical commissioning groups, led by GPs.

It will also create Health and Wellbeing Boards, where commissioners will work with local councillors to improve health provision. Shadow versions of these are already in place, ahead of a formal launch next year.

The Department of Health said that this will ‘significantly strengthen the democratic legitimacy of commissioning decisions, as well as providing a forum for challenge, discussion, and the involvement of local people’.

But Miliband said that the government’s package of reforms risked ‘damaging patient care’.

He added: ‘Labour councils will act as the last line of defence against the fragmentation of the NHS. And if we were in government now, we would protect 6,000 nurses’ jobs by dumping their top-down reorganisation.’

Local authority ballots will take place across England, Scotland and Wales on May 3.

Miliband also said that Labour councils were ‘working to keep… costs down’, while seeking to keep Sure Start centres and libraries open amid government cuts.

Labour authorities would work for a ‘common sense’ approach to policing, including maintaining the number of police community support officers on the streets, he added.

Spacer

CIPFA logo

PF Jobsite logo

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top