JOHN LISTER

Socialist Alliance Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Oxford East. (www.oxfordsocialists.org.uk)

Press Release

Wednesday April 25: Immediate Release

Labour’s latest NHS reforms leave public and hospital staff excluded

THE DEFEAT in the House of Lords last night of government plans to scrap Community Health Councils (CHCs) has been welcomed by the Socialist Alliance – though ministers have already vowed to overturn the decision in the Commons.

Since 1974 CHCs have been the statutory bodies charged with upholding the interests of patients and the public. They have irritated successive governments, not least because of their power to halt controversial changes and insist that they go to a ruling of a health minister.

Although some CHCs have proved ineffective, others, like Oxfordshire CHC, have led campaigns on key policy issues – including the closure of Community Hospital beds. The proposed new bodies with which ministers want to replace them have been widely criticised as ineffective, untested, and potentially under the thumb of the NHS bureaucrats they are supposed to hold to account.

Socialist Alliance PPC John Lister, himself a long-standing campaigner on NHS issues, said:

"Ministers want to scrap CHCs not because of the weakness of a handful of tame ones, but because they fear genuinely independent criticism by the most effective CHCs, which are by far the most open and democratic bodies in the NHS.

"The new reforms to the NHS which Alan Milburn is unveiling today underline just how undemocratic the system has become, and that Labour wants it to stay that way.

"The Regional Offices Mr Milburn is to abolish have never had any public accountability: the Health Authorities which are now to be merged are composed only of managers and ministerial appointees, without any local accountability; and the Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) which are to be given even more powers to decide policy are brand new, highly complex bodies of appointed individuals. PCTs are not only remote from the local public: they also exclude any involvement of hospital staff – whether they be doctors, nurses, other professionals or support staff.

"These reforms – undoing some of Labour’s own earlier changes – will do nothing to revive morale among staff at the sharp end in a battered, confused and flagging NHS."

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