Alice Hood
Despite the ‘listening exercise’ and the Government’s claims to have made significant changes to the Health and Social Care Bill, the Bill that MPs will vote on this evening is still toxic and messy, and threatens the future of the NHS as we know it.
Earlier this year, it seemed that the Government had scored a significant and somewhat unlikely PR coup. They were pushed into a ‘listening exercise’ due to widespread opposition to the Bill and concerns from the Liberal Democrats which came to the fore at their spring conference. The Future Forum set up to look at the reforms made some useful recommendations about ways to improve the Bill, but didn’t go anywhere near far enough to deal with the fundamental concerns about the Bill. But the media was keen for a story about the political machinations behind the coalition, and so the Government managed to present themselves as having listened and responded to concerns and having overhauled the Bill.
In fact, the Bill that returned to the Commons yesterday is still a toxic combination of competition, markets and fragmentation that could shake the foundations of the NHS. The changes made following the listening exercise make minor improvements in some areas, but in others they leave the Bill more complex and muddled and make the system more bureaucratic and unaccountable.
To take just a few examples of the areas where we still have serious concerns:
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