Last week in a debate in the Commons he managed to sound alternately arrogant and defensive, and when Ed raised the subject in prime minister’s questions, David Cameron was unprepared and weak.
Much has already been said about what’s intrinsically wrong with these so-called reforms: the conflicts of interest, the creeping privatisation, the postcode lottery that will result. And that’s not to mention the organisational chaos. In my own borough of Trafford, we have a primary care trust that is temporarily merging into a Greater Manchester super-structure, before de-merging into the new GP-led consortia within the year. We have a range of other provider services boxed off to new, and again temporary, management, under the control of neighbouring Ashton, Wigan and Leigh. And we have Trafford Healthcare Trust, which encompasses Trafford General and two other local hospitals, told that for financial reasons it can’t have independent foundation status, and it’s to be taken over by yet another neighbouring trust, causing great concern that local services will go.
Staff and management are doing a great job in the face of this chaos, but hardly surprisingly some are beginning to leave. It’s a total mixture of muddle, ideology and arrogance, and the blame lies squarely at the government’s door.
So there’s an understandable desire for Labour to be hitting the government much harder on the NHS. After all, this is territory where we’ve always been more trusted than the Tories. And now, new research (which the government’s busily trying to bury) shows that our reforms and investment led to higher levels of patient satisfaction and improving health outcomes after years of Tory damage and neglect.
We need a careful, forceful and coordinated campaign, working with health unions and patients groups. It’s a campaign Labour must lead in and most importantly outside parliament – not just for the vital and obvious reasons for a well-functioning, well-resourced NHS, but because we’re missing an enormous political opportunity if we do not.