Sale of the Century

I include myself in this failure in communicating, “The Sale of the Century”. Despite tweeting the hell out of the issue @legalaware, I have to hold my hands up high, and say that “I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry”.

On April 1st 2013, the war is not quite over. The legal instruments to privatise the NHS come into effect. So why has this not been of interest to the media or the general public?

I still feel the general public is interested in the wider issue of NHS privatisation. A problem with campaigns such as 38 Degrees has been that many of the signatories, numbering in the millions, often cannot give a clear explanation of why they oppose NHS privatisation. Even fewer are less clear about how the privatisation came into being. Many people have even denied in an outright way that it is not privatisation but marketisation instead, and tend to refuse point-blank to concede that they were wrong (though drinking themselves at the last-chance saloon and having to change their viewpoints in the hope that nobody notices.)

It is tempting to blame it all on the media, especially the public sector broadcasters, but there is an alternative explanation for why they would willingly not wish to cover the “reforms”. The “reforms” have been such a slow-burn that it has been tricky for the media to identify what is new or newsworthy, and many journalists themselves may not have an accurate viewpoint of how this policy instrument has come about in the last two decades. Allyson Pollock and Colin Leys have tried with their books, Lucy Reynolds has tried with her video and papers, Caroline Molloy has tried with her tireless campaigning, Clive Peedell, Richard Taylor and the NHA Party have even tried to get the public behind this issue, but the legislation will come into force on 1 April 2013. Clare Gerada has been often been a lone voice in a sea of the medical Royal Colleges, though latterly the Royal Colleges did unite in opposition to the original NHS England procurement statutory instrument  (“SI 2013/057″).

I strongly believe in a presumption of innocence, but I don’t feel SI 2013/057 was an accidental bit of dodgy drafting. I think the purpose of thrusting the NHS into new private markets was made all too clear, and the political class in virtual entirety, apart from Adrian Sanders, Andrew George or Caroline Lucas, have not explained what the problem is. The new Health and Social Care Act is a natural conclusion of throwing the NHS into privatised markets, compatible with EU competition law and international trade, and is a stepping stone in a policy which has seen the NHS engrossed in long-term loans at uncompetitive interest rates (PFI), expansion of “NHS Foundation Trusts” even if they run into public problems with patient safety and finances (nobody reasonable believes that Mid Staffs is an isolated affair, just look at Morecambe for example), and a whole series of failures where no political party can claim complete innocence apart from possibly the Greens.

So certain people can find someone else to blame, but that does not get rid of the fundamental problem. What do we do now? There are surely limitations in putting our eyes into the “raising awareness” basket. I suspect this situation has arisen because the political process is psychopathic (look at how Labour, Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, and “Hacked Off” have colluded behind closed doors to work on the ‘press regulation deal). I strongly feel that nothing will be done this side of a general election. The Labour Party have been less than forthcoming on their opposition to the latest statutory instrument (four MPs had signed it by this morning), there has been no press release about the new statutory instrument on the Labour website with people scrabbling desperately for any information from David Lock or Andy Burnham’s Twitter stream. If there is a hung parliament as widely predicted for 2015 between the Labour Party or Liberal Democrats, it will be business-as-usual. If the Conservatives win, it will be business-as-usual. Labour have offered to repeal the Act, but even they might lose their mojo if Andy Burnham moves onto bigger and better things?

And as for the NHS? This privatisation has offered thus far no funding solutions for a service in difficulty, nor any immediate solutions for families devestated by failures of the NHS. There is much to be proud of, however, in the NHS, and many would like to see the NHS succeed. But it does need someone to take the bull-by-the-horns, and to show real leadership at a time which really could turn out to be a crisis.