It has been another exciting week in Greater Manchester. At the forefront of devolution, with the first combined authority in the country, getting more control locally over services that make a difference to our city and citizens.
Manchester is a growing city – the main economic driver for the region, and the biggest economy outside of the south-east. But we still have major areas of deprivation, and the health outcomes for far too many of our residents are among the worst in the country. In the Devolution Agreement signed last November there was a commitment to integrate health and social care across Greater Manchester. This is in line with Labour’s commitment to do just that when we are in government. This week’s announcement saw a huge step towards that – going further and faster than we expected.
All parts of the health service in Manchester – 10 local authorities, 12 clinical commissioning groups, all foundation trusts and mental health care trusts – will have the power to determine locally how best to spend their budgets. Crucially, they will also have the power to join up services in a better way, producing better outcomes for the people that live here. Almost seventy-five per cent of the way money is spent is determined locally already, through councils and CCGs, but this new system will be groundbreaking in the way that all partners will work together. We are all agreed that this is the best way forward. The powers to do this will reside with the combined authority, 10 democratically elected leaders, working alongside health partners. The responsibility for care will remain with individual authorities. It will not, despite press reports, be part of the powers of the new metro mayor.
This is absolutely not about taking the national out of the National Health Service. This is about working within the national framework, with local power to make it work better. It is about joining up care for vulnerable older people, for example, and combined care packages that help keep them at home for longer, without the artificial barriers of which bit of the service is responsible for which bit of care.
The Labour party is committed to devolution, and Ed Miliband and the shadow cabinet have supported our demands for devolved budgets and decision making. I genuinely believe that better decisions are made when done as close to the people who those decisions affect as possible. In Manchester, we are the first to be offered local control over health budgets. Ultimately, we want all other areas to have this too.
Greater Manchester is famous as the birthplace of the NHS. The first NHS hospital, Park Hospital, now Trafford General, was opened by Aneurin Bevan on 5 July 1948 – the day the NHS came into being. Our new agreement is about carrying forward that legacy, Labour’s legacy, and protecting the primary function of the NHS, health care for those who need it, free at the point of use. It’s about working together to improve lives and outcomes for those who need it most.
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Sue Murphy is deputy leader of Manchester city council
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What consultation has taken place with people in Greater Manchester?
How will this affect people living on the outskirts of Manchester, in Cheshire East, say, who currently have access to Christies and the other Manchester hospitals?
How can we support this sort of piece-meal devolution – without a clear plan for where it is going? Where are Labour’s proposals on what will replace the Clinical Commissioning Act we intend to abolish? How are councils with little money going to take on this extra function? Will health spending be ring-fenced, or will money be taken from the NHS budget to fill the hole in care funding created by council budget cuts. Manchester Council seems more intent on empire building than on fighting Tory cuts and having a cohesive response and alternative involving all Labour councils and councillors.
A 100% Labour council in Manchester is 100% behind the Tories with an undemocratic plan for this so-called devolution. Pretending the Labour Party nationally supports these proposals is grossly misleading at best and deliberately lying at worst.
Where is the mandate from the people of Manchester for Leese and the council to do any of this?
Even if this goes ahead it is a plan for power over billions of pounds of spending in the hands of only 11 people (council leaders plus the Greater Manchester Mayor).
Richard Leese said last night he also wants power over fiscal policy to raise money as well as spend it.
Are we supposed to lie back as Richard Leese and his unprincipled acolytes set up the Richard Leese Indepndent State of Greater Manchester?
I live in Greater Manchester and support decentralisation of the NHS and other budgets.
BUT
1. National coordination of the NHS needs to be strengthened ensuring that all parts of the NHS comply with agreed standards (for care, for research, for data, for transactions between NHS areas)
2. The NHS is excluded from the 2011 Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations which dictates that all services should be put out to competitive tender every three years. See The Guardian why this is essential: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/26/devolved-nhs-budgets-questions-over-manchesters-new-powers
For heavens sake what a bunch of moaners! All those involve in health and politics know that the need to properly integrate health and social care is essential for the benefit of patients especially the elderly but nothing has been done – until now. Local politicians and managers in Greater Manchester have been working across all parties to create a successful political partnership in the city region. It is part of a much bigger devolution that will help to re-generate the local economy and provide the skilled and well paid jobs that are desperately needed. GM is paving the way for other combined authorities. The only people who should be nervous are Whitehall bureaucrats who think one size fits all of England and have no interest in views outside Westminster.