Health & Social Care Bill delayed
The controversial Health & Social Care Bill has been delayed by ten weeks to enable Ministers to “listen and engage” over widespread concerns that the Bill will introduce a market based economy into the NHS at the same time as it needs to make substantive savings.
Last week a nurses’ union delivered an overwhelming vote of no confidence in the Secretary of State’s management of the plans.
The government says it is taking advantage of a natural “pause” in the progress of the Health and Social Care Bill through Parliament to hold a listening exercise with health care groups to improve the plans and build more support behind them.
The Prime Minister denied this was a “PR exercise”, adding: “We are looking at proper and substantive changes because we want to get this right.”
He told the SKY programme that he had a personal commitment to the NHS and wanted it to succeed – but it had to be modernised and improved, owing to challenges such as an ageing population.
He said there were some “key elements” to the reforms – making sure hospitals were more independent, keeping foundation trusts, paying by results, giving GPs a “lead role” in commissioning care, and getting politicians to “stand back” from the health service.
There is still little know about how services for rare diseases will be managed differently under the National Commissioning Board that will take responsibility for specialised services.