City backs plan for NHS shake-up
THE CITY has thrown its weight behind controversial government plans to reform the NHS, according to the latest results from our Voice of the City panel, run in association with PoliticsHome.com.
More than two-thirds of our panel of business and finance professionals said they were in favour of plans to allow “any willing provider”, whether NHS, private or voluntary, to offer public health services, and 65 per cent said they supported proposals for a regulator that would promote competition to provide NHS services in England.
The panellists, recruited to represent a cross-section of the business and financial community in and around London, were responding to plans put forward in January by health secretary Andrew Lansley for a radical shake-up in how the NHS is run. More than 500 panellists responded.
Their views provide a stark contrast to the backlash that the government has faced since Lansley’s Bill was
published. Unions, NHS leaders and MPs from all the major political parties have insisted that the reforms need to be rethought.
Under the plans, 151 primary care trusts (PCTs) and strategic care authorities will be disbanded by 2012 and replaced by consortia of GPs responsible for commissioning services.
Though 71 per cent of participants in our poll came out in favour of scrapping PCTs, just 17 per cent felt that GPs should have sole responsibility for commissioning public health services, with 41 per cent preferring that a wider range of NHS professionals also be involved in the process.
A further 13 per cent said that local councillors should also be on commissioning bodies, to give greater democratic accountability to the process. Just 11 per cent said commissioning services should remain unchanged.
“GPs have gone through a long training in providing first level health care,” said one panellist. “It is unreasonable to expect them to be experts in health economics and the competing forces of healthcare providers – we should have specialists doing this.”
Lansley has admitted the cost of the reforms would include a £1bn redundancy bill from scrapping more than 24,000 NHS positions, but said that the changes are projected to save more than £5bn this parliament.
Downing Street was forced to deny over the weekend that Lansley may quit the cabinet over changes to the proposed reforms, as Liberal Democrat members of the coalition push for the bill to be watered down.
Last month, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg called for clauses on private sector involvement and encouraging competition to be removed, and said that the reforms should be significantly delayed to allow for further analysis.
But just eight per cent of our panellists said they most approved of Nick Clegg’s handling of the NHS reform debate, with 37 per cent backing David Cameron’s handling of the dispute.
If you wish to apply to join our panel of business and finance professionals, and take our weekly, 30-second email survey, please go to www.cityam.com/panel