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The price tariffs political mess might be a taster of the economic mess in the NHS to come
Several sectors have tried to address how competition might provide better quality for the customer. The basic hope is that by ‘opening up the market’ to more providers, the private market is more intense, the choice is wider, and customers receive a ‘good deal’. However, there are very few markets in the U.K. where this can be said to have worked. We can all think of the big five in supermarkets, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Safeway and Morrison’s. Earlier this year, 2,000 dairy farmers attended a rally in Westminster to bring attention to the situation. The following weekend they picketed branches of Asda, Morrisons and the Co-operative, which pay less than Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose. More pickets are expected this weekend, powered by movements such as Farmers for Action and #sosdairy, which has been trending on Twitter. As little as far back as 2011, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said it saw clear problems with competitiveness in the audit market, meaning referral to the Competition Commission is almost certain. The OFT said the dominance of by so few firms – PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, Deloitte and KPMG – made it hard for rivals to compete and didn’t allow for companies to switch auditors, creating what critics have described as a dangerous dependence on too few firms.
Today, David Cameron’s pledge to ensure that gas and electricity consumers get the lowest tariff was thrown into confusion today as the Government staged a partial retreat. Labour accused the Prime Minister of presiding over another “omnishambles” after John Hayes, the Energy Minister, stopped short of repeating Mr Cameron’s promise on Wednesday of legislation to ensure “energy companies have to give the lowest tariff to their customers.” Last year, John Robertson, a Glasgow MP and member of the Energy Commons Select Committee, called on the regulator to use its toughest penalty – fining suppliers up to 10pc of their turnover – as dual-fuel bills have risen to a record £1,300 per year. In a Commons motion, he claims that recent energy price rises by the “Big Six” are “clear acts of anti-competitive behaviour” . Across these companies – British Gas, npower, E.ON, EDF, SSE and Scottish Power, the maximum fine for their supply businesses could be around £4bn in total, based on last year’s revenues. Mr Robertson wants to see any penalties imposed on the companies put in a “consolidated fund via the Treasury” and dispersed to consumers. He further added: “These companies are pinching money out of the pockets of the poorest people in this country at a time when snow is about to fall and when wholesale energy prices are low. Yet the Government and Ofgem are acting like there is nothing they can do”. The executive director of Which?, Richard Lloyd, has recently written a strongly worded letter to David Cameron: “It’s time to face facts: the energy market is broken. The sector is dominated by a handful of big and powerful players who are seemingly unaffected by the normal competitive pressure of price and customer service.” Reacting to Cameron’s announcement yesterday, Lloyd said: “Legislating so energy companies have to give the lowest tariff to their customers is a big statement from the prime minister and acknowledges that competition in the energy retail market has failed. This is a big moment for consumers, but we must now see these words turned into action and see the detail from the government in the energy bill.”
An obvious solution to increasing the scope for competition is to lower the barriers-to-entry for new entrants to the market. Interestingly, in the new legal services market of England, reported today, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has made a conscious decision not to place too many conditions on new alternative business structures (ABSs), its leader has revealed. Chief executive Antony Townsend said the terms of the licence had deliberately been kept simple for the 33 entities that have been granted ABS status by the regulator so far. Speaking today at the Westminster Legal Policy Forum, Townsend said the aim was not to tie the SRA or applicants ‘up in knots’ and instead to monitor their behaviour after they had become an ABS. ‘We’re supervising appropriately and managing risk appropriately rather than trying to put in place elaborate licensing conditions,’ according to Townsend. The new NHS, which has allowed greater scope for private provision, faces a similar task. In a pamphlet for the King’s Fund by Loraine Hawkins from July 2011, entitled “Can competition and integration co-exist in a reformed NHS?”, it is conceded that much of the public debate about the Health and Social Care Act 2012 has focused on proposals to give Monitor, the sector regulator for the NHS, a duty to promote competition (where appropriate) and to apply national and EU competition law to foundation trusts. The emphasis in Monitor’s competition role will instead focus on prohibiting behaviour that prevents, restricts or distorts competition contrary to the interests of NHS patients. This revised formulation of Monitor’s duties will mirror the language of competition law, instead of using more activist pro-competition language modelled on legislation governing economic regulation of the privatised utilities. However, this is potentially worrying, if the blueprint for regulation of the NHS is a sector where there have been massive problems thus far.
For competition to work in the NHS, it will be necessary likewise to ensure that the barriers-to-entry for new entrants to the healthcare market are not onerous so as to prevent entry, but high enough to ensure quality of healthcare and trust of the public in the reputation in the NHS. “Any Qualified Provider” is a procurement model which clinical commissioning groups could use to develop a register of providers accredited to deliver a range of specified services within a community setting. The model aims to reduce bureaucracy and barriers to entry for potential providers. However, thus far, the NHS market could face the same problems in supermarkets and accounting, with a dominance on a few firms which have a legal obligation to maximise dividend for the shareholder. For example, it was reported only this month that two major players in the private healthcare market, Virgin and Serco, have considerable made strides into the NHS as business gurus claim the private sector is set to cash in on community services. All of this is deeply worrying, as the track history in disasters of privatisation is now getting quite substantial. Other examples are wide-ranging, described here, including railways, hospital cleaning, bus services, prisons, and social care.
A complex interplay of factors now determines the future of the NHS
2011 was the first full year of the introduction of the full privatisation of the NHS, and a year of the steepest decline in public satisfaction in the UK, in the first full year of the Coalition after all parties had failed to win outright the 2010 UK general election. There’s a very important notion in finance and business that the markets are very sensitive to dividends. That is why for example other investors will be interested in the corporate ‘health’ of the economy, with the shareholder dividend as a potent signal in the market, for example.
I spent this afternoon spending a couple of hours at the Socialist Health Association Annual General Meeting. Obviously rules provide that I cannot blog openly about what was discussed, partly because I cannot remember exactly what was discussed. Imagine my joy when I emerged from the Friends Meeting House on Mount Street to find that @Putneydebates has let me know that Ed Miliband had made an announcement on the NHS. This was all however relatively relaxing compared to having read all 500 pp. of the new Health and Social Care Act for an informal chat I was to have with Dr Lucy Reynolds later last week.
I have indeed had trouble in finding the actual announcement. This is the best I could find:
Please note the use of the word “reverse”, and critically of the word ‘all’. In this era of knee-jerk reactionary politics, it is important to be clear about HM’s official Opposition can achieve realistically. This is because Labour are intensely edgy, because they do not know the exact state of the economy on May 8th 2015. If the Conservatives inherited a “mess” due to a massive financial stimulus to the banking industry to stop an outright depression, the mess potentially handed to the governing party/parties in May 2015 could be far worse. When Labour lost the election in 2010, the UK economy was actually growing. It then predictably entered a ‘double dip recession’ earlier this year due to a lack of a Keynesian stimulus and strangulation of consumer demand (as people in the public sector had less money, and VAT went up).
Andy Burnham has previously promised to repeal the Act (as he argued for a long time in Parliament). This is not in any dispute, though critics wonder about, having made the promise, what a realistic timescale for the repeal might be. Burnham is aware that, by 2015, more of this ‘top-down reorganisation’ (which nobody as such voted for), will have been implemented. We may still be in recession in May 2015, therefore it would be impossible for Labour to embark on a costly programme for the NHS. The facts are that Labour has introduced commissioning in some form, and Foundation Trusts, but the extent of private ownership, the elaborated on commissioning, means that there are strands of policy which are indeed deeply engrained. Furthermore, it is certainly not clear what the state of the UK economy will be in May 2015; the UK economy entered a double-dip earlier this year, and borrowing is increasing, therefore Labour’s room for manoeuvre is genuinely limited.
There is no doubt that there was much distress amongst some about the UK Labour Party’s future direction on the NHS last night. The problem is that NHS has had so many operations, some plastic genuinely to make it function, some reconstructive to make it appear more attractive, that it now runs the risk of being totally unrecognisable as a hybrid public-private entity. The general public might ‘blame’ the Coalition for introducing these reforms under duress, against opposition of all the Medical Royal Colleges, in particular the Royal College of General Practitioners, under the leadership of Clare Gerada, and the British Medical Association. Some of the public even blame New Labour for introducing the marketisation of the NHS (allegedly), and some blame the BBC particularly (although the topic is incredibly complex, and various interests have been mooted as possibly for why the BBC has preferred to keep silent on the issue as the Bill went through parliament and the House of Lords). However, a growing corpus traditional Labour voters feel that Labour has betrayed its roots on a NHS, truly national, free-at-the-point of use, and paid for entirely out of the taxpayer and which does not make a profit. Indeed, aspects of the denationalisation, marketisation and privatisation can indeed viewed on a spectrum of abolition of national health bodies (such as the Health Protection Authority and National Patient Safety Agency), pricing and competition strategies, procurement contracts which have to obey UK and EU competition law, the introduction of GP Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), administration and rescue of failing trusts, mergers of clinical entities, and acquisitions of State hospitals by private entities. Some of this can be unpicked, some of it is not so easy to unpick.
The extent of private involvement can be unpicked, setting caps by Government, is at the heart of this, and to ensure that enforcement mechanisms exist through Monitor and the Competition Act for large corporates not to abuse economies of scale to deliver a service ‘of poor quality’. These budgets proposed for the CCGs are sufficiently high for the Public Contracts Regulations 1996 to kick in, and because of the way that a financial undertaking is defined by Europe in case law, for EU competition law to kick in (such as article 101). Corporate restructuring and financial restructuring of failing entities are a complicated science, and could apply to CCGs and the new model army of the NHS Foundation Trust; financial assistance is a consideration, and, whilst the sector regulator Monitor will be heavily involved, also embroil in addition to the Health and Safety Act (2012) the Companies Act (2006) and Insolvency Act (1986).
Andy Burnham MP was forced yesterday afternoon to shout ‘repeal, repeal, repeal’ on Twitter, for instance:
Andy had also made this very clear in the Houses of Parliament earlier this year in the ‘opposition day’ debate on the NHS:
In this video, Andy Burnham does confirm his intention to repeal the Act ‘in its entirety’, ‘as it is a defective piece of suboptimal legislation which has saddled the NHS with a complicated mess” and “unintelligible”; Burnham adds further “it would be irresponsible to leave it in its place”. Ed Miliband, however, has previously mooted that he might reverse clinical commissioning, but Miliband’s current position on this is unclear. To reconcile the fact the Act will be repealed but there will be a change of direction under Labour, Burnham states that “organisations will be asked to differently”, implying that the structures being abolished in the current tranche in reforms will remain abolished (i.e. PCTs and SHAs), but there will be less competition in the further evolution of the Act which might not necessitate a new full-blown act and not require yet another extremely costly “top down reorganisation”, as it is said that morale in most of the NHS is now actually extremely poor.
There is no doubt that there has to be further documented guidance on the investigative powers of Monitor, although it is true to say the onus will be on the sector to report issues (as similar for the FSA and OFT), but CCGs will need to have legal guidance about defending possible legal claims for judicial review or breach of contract in procurement contracts for enforceable legal rights. According to s.10(1) Part 2 Schedule 1A of the Act, a CCG is a ‘body corporate‘, which is extremely fortunate as the default position would have been a traditional legal partnership under the Partnership Act (1890) s.1. Whilst many CCGs may view themselves as businesses, many have not chosen to become private limited companies under law (directors of a private limited company are obligated to promote the success of the company, under the Companies Act (2006), which is narrowly defined as maximisation of shareholder dividend); however legal clarity is indeed needed about the liability of the body corporate of the CCG in this particular case, as for example private limited companies have limited liability but traditional partnerships do not. It is patently clear that CCGs, which might still outlive this political drama, will need advice on, and more resources for, the management and legal operations of their businesses, whilst Labour struggles the ‘best’ of clinical commissioning. Labour may also have to work closely with firms such as KPMG and KcKinsey and Company, with the Coalition, in the meantime to construct a ‘risk register’ regarding issues faced by CCGs in real life (such as ongoing problems with contracts or staff wishing to resign or being made redundant). Labour also has to revisit the issues, even having repealed the Act, at an operational level to address rationing-by-cost which it has traditionally opposed, as for example shown in cataract surgery.
This has now turned into a political mess, and Labour as far as I can tell is still fully committed to getting rid of the Act. This would send out a very positive message from the Labour ‘command and control’ centre to its members and potential voters, but Labour needs to resolve as to whether this might spook out corporate investors through for example dividend signalling described above. However, whilst yesterday afternoon was ‘not great’, at least Labour appears to be willing to have a clear debate about this. Andy Burnham has asked the Coalition ‘to be honest about its true intentions about private involvement in the NHS’, and it would help all concerned, especially those in the NHS (including doctors particularly GPs, nurses, other healthcare professionals) members of the public, lawyers and management consultant firms, if Labour could be categorically repeat in a speech that (a) the Act will be repealed, (b) some indications about which strands of it (some are deeply enmeshed) will remain in situ.
Andrew Mitchell and Nick Clegg may be 'sorry', but not as sorry as we are
Nick Clegg’s convoluted description of what he is apologising for is reminiscent of a criminal who is not particularly regretful about the actual offence, but rather that he has been caught red-handed. Rather than drawing a line under the pledges debacle, which could see its ultimate denouement with Julian Huppert losing his Varsity seat in Cambridge, it has triggered an unpredicted sense of hostility to the Liberal Democrat Party. Whilst it is a valid criticism that there is no apology which Nick Clegg could give, which could be accepted by the majority of Labour voters, a number of people sincerely ask whether Nick Clegg shows any remorse at being guilty of ultimately enacting the privatisation of the NHS, or signing the ‘death warrant’ for thousands of law centres and similar establishments around the country.
The way in which the Coalition makes decisions, by ‘diktat’, shows no shame. Michael Gove has ploughed ahead with his E-Bacc system, albeit rooted in a deep-seated sense of dissatisfaction with how private providers have not delivered competition but profit in the GCSE examining system. However, the way in which he has done this is distasteful, as he has not engaged with the teachers or headteachers unions. Likewise, the Conservative Government, whilst having a favourable relationship with Circle, Virgin and Serco, have not been able to engage the goodwill of the Royal College of Practitioners, making the notion that GPs are leading the recovery an unmitigated joke. Nick Clegg has become a laughing stock, with LibDem strategists apparently behind-the-scenes questioning his judgement over providing a bare-faced apology with such bare-faced cheek.
That his party will be annihilated in 2015 is not in any question, but he seems to have virtually no insight into the demise of his party. His activists have not experienced a crisis of insight yet, which means that they are currently delusional in their party conference in Brighton. The feeling that Nick Clegg will always look after himself, and look after his chauffeur-driven cars, has always pervaded the sense of business of this government. The “out-of-touch” label previously attached to the Conservatives still promises to do much damage to the Coalition in general, more so than the economy. George Osborne is not particularly sorry for wilfully denying a Keynesian stimulus, thus reversing the economy from growth to recession in a space of about two years. He has not said sorry for this, and nor will he. He has not said sorry for the tax cut benefit which has been of benefit to a substantial number of his core supporters, and nor will he. He has not said sorry for the borrowing requirement, in the face of rampant corporate tax avoidance of a much bigger magnitude, and nor he will he. However, George Osborne is not alone in his lack of apology. Iain Duncan-Smith has not apologised for the fact that the disabled citizens of the UK feel demonised and victimised by this Government, feeling that the new welfare reform mechanisms will be unfair. It has been warned that the administration of the ‘universal credit’ and ‘personal independent payment’ will be a disaster, and, whilst the ATOS contract was initially awarded under Labour, nobody appears to be accountable over the problems which have led to an unusually high rate of successful appeals on benefits decisions. Nick Buckles appears to be ‘sorry’, but does not wish to return the money that G4s received for the Olympics to the taxpayer.
Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell, at least has said ‘sorry’. After police prevented him from leaving the main Downing Street gate on his bike on Wednesday, the cabinet minister reportedly launched into a class-based rant against the officers. According to the Sun, he demanded: “Open this gate, I’m the Chief Whip. I’m telling you — I’m the Chief Whip and I’m coming through these gates.” When officers refused to do so, he allegedly responded:
Best you learn your fucking place. You don’t run this fucking government.
You’re fucking plebs.
It is the alleged use of the pejorative “plebs”, denoting those of a lower order, that is toxic for Mitchell and the Tory-led government. Like Mitt Romney’s attack on “the 47%“, it’s brilliantly designed to confirm the view that this is a government of the wealthy for the wealthy. Mitchell has already apologised for the altercation, although he denied using the language ascribed to him by the Sun. In a statement he said: “On Wednesday night I attempted to leave Downing Street via the main gate, something I have been allowed to do many times before. As well as the deep-seated ‘out-of-touch’ issue above, however, there is also a pervasive theme from the Hunt handling of Hackgate; Gategate like Huntgate reveals an element of two-facedness, where the Tories appear to tell the public one another and act behind-the-scenes in a completely different manner. Trust is of course something which voters concern; apparently both parties are not trusted on the economy, despite the economic incompetence of the Tories being well evidenced. The Conservatives have been able to maintain their fraudulent lie that Brown’s government overspent recklessly because Sir Mervyn King, outgoing Governor of the Bank of England, has never explained why such a big stimulus was necessary to prevent the global economic crash in the UK turning into an outright depression, and the state broadcaster, the BBC, somehow became complicit in producing a distorted narrative for the general public. The social media, however, have been able to undermine this fraudulent lie, however, in recent times.
Andrew Mitchell and Nick Clegg may be sorry, but not as sorry as we are. Due to the nature of fixed term governments, the incompetent Coalition will not be thrown out until May 8th 2015. Instead of producing solid government in a time of uncertainty, they have provided disunity exacerbating massively a sense of uncertainty. If the economy continues to go downhill (and a Keynesian stimulus would not have effect for several years now), with poor GDP output and continued recession for after 2015, it is very plausible that the UK will lose in fact its coveted ‘credit rating’. The economy is ‘broken’, with shareholders reaping massive dividends from imperfect privatised markets, and successive Governments have done everything they can to undermine the employment rights of workers and employees. Labour of course has a chance to remedy this on behalf of its ‘core vote’, and the critical next step will be the policy review. If Ed Miliband is unable to produce a coherent direction for Labour soon, the 2015 election, if it delivers a Conservative majority, will see the E-Bacc inflicted on the UK for certain, and the first ever mandate for the NHS privatisation. At that time, all the Liberal Democrat carping about “that illegal war” will simply be a painful memory, as indeed their party will also be a painful memory for many on the left.
British Gas and oligopolies – the need for regulation and lessons for the privatised NHS
THIS ARTICLE WAS UPDATED ON 13 APRIL 2013
The “fast-buck society”, epitomised by the quick-to-fire Beecroft proposals of employment which is currently unlawful under both domestic and European law, does not respect people in society – it only respects shareholder dividend. Companies are in it for the short-term; therefore any strategy they have is to generate profit in the short-term, indeed a legal obligation of theirs. Unions protect workers, and we virtually agree that it’s essential that workers in society must have protection. The situation regarding privatised utilities is an excellent example of the failure of the markets, and 20 years later history could be repeating itself with our NHS.
Privatisation only works if there is effective regulation of the market, given that the market is so imperfect. The end-result was the production of a few entities in a crowded marketplace, offering effectively no competition and no choice for the customer. Meanwhile, some people did extremely well out-of-it; these are the same people who have benefited from the top band tax cut by George Osborne’s abysmally executed budget.
British Gas this morning faced criticism over alleged profiteering, amid City predictions that the company will reveal this week that it made £100m in extra profits in the first six months of the year. The parent of British Gas, Centrica, reports first-half figures on Thursday. City analysts are now expecting the residential energy supply arm of Centrica, which trades as British Gas, to unveil first- half profits up 25% at £355m as part of a wider Centrica group profit of £1.4bn. Centrica is thought to defend soaring profits by pointing out it reduced its residential electricity prices earlier this year by 5%. Bain has successfully argued that those least able to pay bills are genuinely confused by complex tariffs, and believed that current attempts by the government and industry regulator Ofgem to tackle these problems are insufficient.
The precise accusation is that such companies have been profiteering which comes at the expense of the poor, vulnerable and elderly. Consumer Focus, the government-backed consumer watchdog, said households were facing historically high energy bills, and had long held suspicions that domestic power pricing was not fair. From a regulatory point of view, this has been nothing short of a disaster from the customer’s perspective. The City is encouraging investors to buy Centrica shares and believes that the chances of Ofgem taking a tougher stance against the ‘Big Six; is increasingly unlikely.
The ‘Big Six’ form an “oligopoly”, a common market form. Oligopolistic competition can give rise to a wide range of different outcomes. In some situations, the firms may employ restrictive trade practices such as collusion to raise prices and restrict production in much the same way as a monopoly. Any formal agreement or concerted practice would be unlawful, and be caught by the Competition Act. Firms often collude in an attempt to stabilise unstable markets, so as to reduce the risks inherent in these markets for investment and product development. There does not have to be a formal agreement for collusion to take place (although for the act to be illegal there must be actual communication between companies) – for example, in some industries there may be an acknowledged market leader which informally sets prices to which other producers respond, known as “price leadership”.
What has not happened in this market, unfortunately for the customer, is a situation of competition between sellers in an oligopoly which can be fierce, with relatively low prices and high production. This could lead to an efficient outcome approaching “perfect competition”. In a normal market, it is supply and demand that mostly affect price. Should a consumer find a similar product offered by another provider at a cheaper price, he will make his purchase from that other provider. Suppliers will not, therefore, over-inflate their prices because they will simply lose customers. In an oligopoly, there is little choice for consumers and this will negate any influence they may have had over price control.
The “Big Six” show all the hallmarks an oligopoly. There is literally a ‘handful’ pf sellers. An oligopoly maximises profits by a number of measures. Oligopolies are price setters rather than price takers Barriers to entry from new competitors, are high The most important barriers are economies of scale, patents, access to expensive and complex technology, and strategic actions by incumbent firms designed to discourage or destroy new firms. Additional sources of barriers to entry often result from government regulation favoring existing firms making it difficult for new firms to enter the market. The sellers are all selling the same thing (e.g. gas, water) – i.e. it’s a heterogeneous undifferentiated market. The distinctive feature of an oligopoly is interdependence. Oligopolies are typically composed of a few large firms. Each firm is so large that its actions affect market conditions. Therefore the competing firms will be aware of a firm’s market actions and will respond appropriately. This means that in contemplating a market action, a firm must take into consideration the possible reactions of all competing firms and their reactions.
Left to its own devices, it is hard to see how end-users (or customers) can benefit from this imperfect competition. That is why the law must step in, and one of the ways in which it can do this is taxation of the utility companies. Due to the dire state of the public finances, made massively worse by this current Government, this might be a reasonable next step.
David Bennett has recently indicated that a “spoonful” of competition will help the NHS. But this is precisely the point – a ‘spoonful’ will produce an oligopoly, where a lot of profit is returned to the shareholder and incumbent directors, but not much value is returned to the customer. If the NHS fails to attract many entrants because the significant risks in a sustainable business and financial strategy, exactly the same situation will result from private providers doing a bulk of NHS work. This will end up costing the NHS substantially more in the long-term, and makes a fragmented, non-universal service much more likely. Even Richard Branson opined on LBC this week, on Margaret Thatcher’s death, that he wishes that he had seen more competition in the airlines industry; this, from the perspective of the end-user, is exactly why.
Lord Tony Greaves feels it would be hard to 'drop the Bill' without making Lansley go
It has always been this clause of the Coalition Agreement that has caused many people a lot of discomfort.
The creeping marketisation (and monetisation) of the NHS continues to cause dismay amongst senior Liberal Democrat peers, reflecting the prominent opposition by Nick Clegg in 2011. Baroness Liz Barker described on the blog ‘LibDem voice’, in 2011, that the Liberal Democrats would “continue to argue that there should be nothing in the Bill that will open up the NHS to challenge by large private healthcare companies“. The latest salvo comes from Lord Tony Greaves this evening.
The biography of Lord Tony Greaves is fascinating.
Lord Tony Greaves has been a grass-roots Liberal activist since he joined the Liberals in 1960 (at university at Oxford and at home in Wakefield, Yorkshire). He says that for the past 40 years he has been a “mainstream Grimond-era radical Liberal) and looks with amazement at left-wing friends from the 1960s who have now leap-frogged him to the distant right to cuddle down with New Labour.
He was born and lived as a young child in Bradford but transferred his political allegiances to the North West when living in Manchester many years ago. He was a leading Liberal member of Lancashire County Council for some 25 years (Liberal group leader for a time) and a local Councillor on Colne and Pendle Borough Councils over most of the last three decades of the 20th century (with a spell as leader of Pendle Council).
When he was made a life peer in the list of “working peers” in the spring of 2000 he adopted the territorial designation of Pendle, the famous Lancashire Pennine hill that overlooks much of the mill towns and moors that make up the Borough itself.
Lord Tony Greaves feels that there is a fundamental flaw at the heart of the NHS Bill.
However, Lord Greaves has just given a very sobering interview on BBC’s Westminster Hour. On some good news, he feels that there has been a lot of safeguards to be welcome. For example, the Secretary of State is directly responsible to parliament.
Andrew Lansley would like to deliver a huge increase in productivity through commercial activity. However, Lord Greaves fundamentally believes that this would lead to privatisation of the NHS, and feels that this could lead to profits being returned to the private sector. Greaves feels that the regulation of this would be extremely difficult. There is going to be a steady seepage of services through to the private sector, according to Lord Greaves.
Lord Greaves feels that ultimately there have been so many changes in the Bill that it is likely that no party is going to be satisfied with the Bill. Lord Owen threatened the Bill did not go to Report, but now it looks as if the Bill is going to be passed in a substantially different Bill. Lord Greaves is further concerned about the use of the Financial Privilege being misused, making the Lords’ attendance redundant. However, Lord Greaves feels that the amendments have taken place due to a huge amount of compromise.
Lord Tony Greaves is ultimately concerned about the fragmentation and privatisation of the Bill. A lot of medical organisations have made it clear what they want, and it is hard for the Bill to be killed, without making Lansley go.
Is BPP suffering from the "Stockholm Syndrome"? Roll on Friday…
I don’t do ‘undue deference’, which is why I once felt uneasy when a partner at a firm in the Magic Circle carried my bag from one room to the next, when moving rooms in a training contract interview.
That’s why I suppose I love ‘Roll on Friday‘, which, according to them, “provides news, views and gossip on the legal profession – including the top firms’ salaries.” ‘Roll on Friday’ is essential reading for me, as I am thinking about (remotely) applying for a training contract this Summer. However, I am taking my MBA much more seriously, as it genuinely interests me, unlike the training contract application process. We cover in huge detail “organisational culture“, i.e. the importance of what makes a corporate tick to how it involves its members and individuals outside the company. A really useful introduction to corporate culture is given here in the Times newspaper.
This is precisely why I devour articles by ‘Roll on Friday’ which provide insight into culture in the City: e.g. on international corporate law recruitment here, “There were red faces at recruitment firm First Counsel, chosen by Slaughter and May to advertise its vacancies, after it posted a pompous and apparently xenophobic job advertisement.” Or this, for example (!), “A City law firm has announced a “great temporary opportunity’” for fresh-faced law graduates to, errr, work as catering staff.”
And this is precisely the cheeky humour I love, when ‘Roll on Friday’ (@RollOnFridayWeb) tweeted us the following on 28 June 2011 (status here),
“Stockholm Syndrome? RT @legalaware: @carllygo @seeyouatthebar @_millymoo @jfierce_mighty haha. I think BPP is brill #justsaying”
I found this incredibly amusing.
So, what is “Stockholm Syndrome“? Not being as cultured as ‘Roll on Friday’, I had to look it up on Wikipedia. This is the current entry for the condition:
In psychology, Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a real paradoxicalpsychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors; sometimes to the point of defending them.
Are members of BPP then showing ‘Stockholm syndrome” towards BPP? Looking at this legalistically, we have to be showing a positive emotional response in conditions of extreme stress. Otherwise known as “terror bonding” or “traumatic bonding”, one has to identify what the extreme stress of being at BPP might be? Is it teaching or studying the GDL, LPC, LLM or MBA, for example? Or is it the highly demanding nature of the exams?
And why my outburst that “BPP is brill”? This boils down to my reaction to a rather vociferous article provided by David Mitchell in the Guardian with the rather aggressive title “When it comes to the crunch, private sector knows best”. David climaxes towards the end with this ‘pièce de résistance':
It’s not expertise, it’s ruthlessness, it’s the prioritisation of profit. What Lygo is offering people running universities is the opportunity to divest themselves of many of the problems inherent in their jobs. If you don’t want to take the tough decisions, he’s saying, if you doubt you’ve got the backbone to make the efficiency savings, then we’ll handle them for you. Pass your troubles on to those of us untroubled by conscience. Not only would this be a dereliction of the universities’ duty, it would also help perpetuate the myth of the private sector’s omnipotence and the public’s doltish money-burning idiocy.
Mitchell is of course entitled to his views. He was, indeed, at Cambridge, which some might say is the world’s best University in the World, beating Harvard. Well, actually, to be accurate, he was there for three years, and I was there for eight as a student (doing several degrees, not re-sitting the same one). Mitchell is talking nonsense if he believes that Oxbridge does not have any commercial drivers. Indeed, the Institute of Economic Affairs has even in a blog article mooted the notion that Cambridge University ‘should go private‘.
And yep – I really enjoyed my GDL and LLB(Hons) because of the huge amount of personal pastoral care I received after my life-threatening meningitis (I was in a coma for two months during my GDL), and Carl Lygo, CEO at BPP, has argued, until he’s ‘blue in the face’, that institutions such as BPP and Cambridge operate in different areas of the education sector, but that ‘there’s room for both of them’ (paraphrasing wildly). Anyway, I think both institutions are great. Maybe I am, in fact, exhibiting “Stockholm Syndrome” towards Cambridge, having been set free from them after nearly a decade? Anyway, please keep up the brilliant work, “Roll on Friday”!
@legalaware can be followed here. @RollonFridayWeb can be followed here.
