 | Forum
Reply | Labour's New Tick Tock Video
at 10:29 7 Jan 2025
Labour activists don't seem great when it comes to their choice of songs. Playing "Things can only get better" as Sunak gave his resignation speech comes to mind. |
| Forum
Reply | Oldham grooming gangs: Government blocks national inquiry
at 10:21 7 Jan 2025
Sorry. but it is all too convenient to seek to discredit a position by pointing to an extreme minority among the many who support that position. For me this just doesn't wash. Of course, there are politics involved, and it would be fair to say that none of the main political parties got to grips with this issue. |
| Forum
Reply | The revival of New Labour and clear red water
at 17:25 6 Jan 2025
Others two used that phrase down through the years to mean private, though it can also take in third sector providers like Macmillan and Marie Curie. A change in terminology that caught my eye is that what were independent centre treatment centres (ISTCs) in the old speak, now seem to be "surgical hubs". In the past there were a limited number of NHS treatment centres based on the ISTC model, and it looks as though many of the new hubs will be also be NHS units that concentrate on a narrow range of routine surgical procedures. |
| Forum
Reply | The revival of New Labour and clear red water
at 05:22 6 Jan 2025
The figures are right there in the link I posted above. 7.300 English patients were admitted for FCEs in 2023/24, while there were 60,700 FCE admissions of Welsh residents to English NHS hospitals. It is possible that one admission generates more than one FCE, so Trampie may be right about actual number of admissions being a bit lower. Nearly 75% of English patients were emergency admissions, and this is probably associated with tourism. The Welsh patient pattern was different with 60% being elective admissions. |
| Forum
Reply | The revival of New Labour and clear red water
at 19:25 5 Jan 2025
The flows and financing are quite complicated. See here for the types of work done across the border.
https://www.gov.wales/nhs-cross-border-care-between-wales-and-england-2024-html#
I don't think A&E attendances are included in these figures because English ICPs and Welsh Health Boards must provide A&E services for everybody present in their area irrespective of residency (non-UK nationals may be charged if admitted). I don't think there is automatically a cross-border transfer payment for each case processed, but I'd guess that a Health Board such Powys will be making an annual block contribution to reflect the regular patient flow.
The downside of devolved healthcare is that patients in different UK home countries may end up with different entitlements, that transfer payments are complicated, and that there is a tendency towards duplicating functions that could be handled at UK level. There are just a few areas that are still managed on a UK NHS basis, such as international relations including legal agreements, medicines safety, national health security and professional regulation. Rhodri Morgan, on the other hand, argued for policy divergence and said: ""Divergence is inherent in devolution… [Wales] will suit the agenda to Welsh needs and then in England they will suit the agenda to England's needs". He would be halfway into Killy's camp (Devo-Max).
Anyway, I will desist as most are bored by too much detail. |
| Forum
Reply | The revival of New Labour and clear red water
at 17:56 5 Jan 2025
Yes, there has long been a flow of patients for some specialised tertiary care surgery, such as cardiac procedures, neuro-surgery and spinal injuries, to English centres. What has been more controversial is the use of treatment centres set up to process large numbers of routine surgical cases such as joint replacements, hernia repair and cataracts. In England, following Milburn's reforms, large number of NHS patients were channelled through private sector treatment centres of this kind, and indeed a private option was supposed to be available as part of the patient choice scheme. Welsh politicians did not like these schemes, but with waiting lists creeping up in the south, Cardiff and Vale sent large numbers of patients to one of the few NHS treatment centres in Weston Super Mare, which was based on a similar model. The centre paid European, mainly Swedish, doctors to work sessions when a string of e.g. knee replacements would be carried out. Unfortunately, the consequences were not good.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/health/patients-in-botched-ops-scandal-228591
Views in Wales then hardened further against this kind of solution to long waiting times.There has been some limited use of English private or NHS providers when Health Boards were under real pressure, but my sense is that any general move to the kind of arrangement that Wes Streeting is outlining will go down like a lead balloon in certain Welsh political and health service circles.
So my opening post was just predicting a bit of friction ahead between the Westminster Labour Government and Labour in the Senedd. That would be nothing new. For those who say "Labour is Labour" just take a look at Rhodri Morgan's entry on Wiki, and what happened just before and after his appointment as First Minister. [Post edited 5 Jan 19:32]
|
| Forum
Reply | The revival of New Labour and clear red water
at 10:13 5 Jan 2025
Agree about the last bit, but anybody with a good memory will know that key Welsh policy actors of the noughties did contrast their traditional Labour views with the New Labour policies they associated with Blair. I could point you to publications by Drakeford and another special advisor of that time - Mike Sullivan - that make that distinction. |
| Forum
Thread | The revival of New Labour and clear red water
at 09:52 5 Jan 2025
Wes Streeting’s announcement in the papers today of addressing the problems of the NHS through improved patient choice of hospital for elective services, and his recent mention of greater use of private hospitals to reduce waiting times, signal a revival of the New Labour policies introduced by Alan Milburn in the noughties. Giving patients the ability to choose between at least three hospitals when they were referred for investigations or treatment was an English NHS policy continued by the Tories/Lib Dems after 2010, but never universally implemented because of variable commitment from GPs and the pressures that tight budgets and later the pandemic brought.
The interesting thing is that patient choice was fiercely resisted by Labour in Wales. First Minister Rhodri Morgan spoke of the "clear red water" between Westminster and Cardiff Bay. Policy makers in Wales attacked the consumerism and market bias of the English New Labour policies. Rather the Welsh Government’s declared strategy was to “... empower the community to have its voice heard and heeded, rather than simply being given a choice of treatment location.” Similarly our government stated that the use of private providers to carry out NHS work would end in Wales (although waiting times pressures in some areas meant it actually continued).
A key special advisor on health to the First Minister at that time was Mark Drakeford. I doubt that our present Health Minister has changed his mind. Are we about to see MSs again muttering about clear red water and the right-leaning tendencies within New Labour?
[Post edited 5 Jan 10:21]
|
| Forum
Reply | Not for public consumption
at 09:42 4 Jan 2025
I wondered if anybody would pick this up. The 987 Inclusion Scheme is one of the examples cited in an article the Telegraph published today entitled ‘Fast track NHS care for asylum seekers’, plus a longer version online.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyx7dyexy7o
(scroll down for front page)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/03/priority-nhs-services-migrants/?msoc
(need account)
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-daily-telegraph-saturday/20250104/28147928204
(accessible version of shorter article)
There seem to be a variety of special arrangements in various English localities for vulnerable people, including asylum seekers and homeless persons, needing an “urgent” assessment, which mean they can jump the NHS queue. The Telegraph explains that: ‘A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) told The Telegraph: “It is vital that all vulnerable members of society, including asylum seekers, are able to access the healthcare they need, and it has been a legal requirement under successive governments for local NHS commissioners to take the right steps through individual contracts to enable this.’
The very interesting question this raises is whether the legal obligation to provide comprehensive healthcare for asylum seekers is any different from the obligation to provide comprehensive healthcare for the general UK population. This came up in a series of famous judicial review cases in the 1980s (starting with the ex parte Hincks case from 1980) where patients who were denied treatments argued that the Secretary of State for Health was failing in his duty under the primary NHS legislation to arrange the provision of comprehensive care. Crucially, all the cases failed because the courts declined to intervene in what they saw as a matter to be determined by political judgement . In essence, the courts ruled that, in exercising his judgement, the Secretary of State was entitled to take into account the resources available to him and the demands on those resources. The NHS Acts did not impose an absolute duty to provide the specified services, so that the Secretary of State was entitled to have regard to the resources made available to him under current government economic policy. This legal framework has changed a bit since 2012 when responsibility was split between the Health Ministers and NHS executives in England and the devolved administrations, but to the best of my knowledge the general principle that governments and health departments are only obligated to provide NHS services according to available resources remains.
So the question arises: if this is the extent of the government’s legal obligation to provide care for the general population is the principle any different for vulnerable groups, like asylum seekers? [Post edited 4 Jan 11:46]
|
| | AnotherJohn
|
Site Scores| Forum Votes: | 1100 | | Comment Votes: | 1 | | Prediction League: | 0 | | TOTAL: | 1101 |
|
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.