No to Health and Social Care Bill

In this week's Cornish Guardian, my column focusses on the Government's disastrous Health Bill. It is as follows:

During the General Election, David Cameron claimed he was defending the “NHS from Labour’s cuts and reorganisations.” In his Party’s manifesto, he pledged to “increase health spending every year.”

The Conservative Party also promised there would be no top-down reorganisation of the National Health Service.

But since May 2010, the number of nurses working in the NHS has been reduced by 3,500, while the Royal College of Nursing and others fear the loss of another 2,500 to 5,000 nursing jobs. And recently thousands took to the streets in Penzance to protest at cuts to West Cornwall Hospital.

The Government has set out a commitment to cut £20 billion from health funding by 2014. It is also attempting to push through a major reorganisation of the NHS, with its increasingly unpopular Health and Social Care Bill.

Measures within the Bill include the abolition of Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities, and their replacement with over 270 clinical / GP commissioning groups. It also includes measures to force greater competition into the provision of healthcare, further privatising the NHS, by opening up a free-for-all for private companies or “any qualified provider.”

Opposition is unprecedented. It comes from nurses, midwives, GPs, doctors and, last week, even extended to three Cabinet Ministers who briefed against the changes.

The legislation remains mired in controversy, but the Health Secretary and his team have decided to bypass the democratic process and are already implementing many of the proposed changes. It has also been revealed that some large consultancies have been awarded large contracts to teach “business skills” to GPs.

Unsurprisingly, the Health Service Journal has described the reforms as “unnecessary, poorly conceived, badly communicated … and a dangerous distraction.”

Clare Gerada of the Royal College of GPs has meanwhile stated “there is absolutely no evidence that opening up the health service to multiple private organisations is going to result in anything other than a fragmented, expensive and bureaucratic health service for all of us and one that will be very difficult to sort out.”

Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, a former GP, has condemned the Bill as a “hand grenade thrown into the NHS,” while Lib Dem MP Andrew George has stated “the fact is that we run the risk of creating a health service which is driven more by private profit than by concern for patient care.”

Like many people, I share these concerns and I oppose the Bill.

Now must be the time for David Cameron to listen to healthcare professionals, worried patients and the general public, and to scrap the Bill and live up to his election promises.

The sale of St Austell

In last week's Cornish Guardian, I had more to say on the sale of the former Restormel Council offices in St Austell. It was as follows:

It is well-documented that I opposed the creation of Cornwall’s unitary authority. And I have seen nothing, since then, to suggest that I was wrong to take that view.

I still despair at the take-over of the six district councils by the County Council and the subsequent birth of the highly politicised and ever more centralising Cornwall Council.

As a member of the new Council, I have consistently argued that it should maintain a strong presence in key towns such as Penzance, St Austell, Wadebridge and Liskeard, in order to act as a buffer against the Truro-centric nature of the authority.

I was therefore very disappointed when the Council’s ruling Cabinet voted to proceed with the sale of the former Restormel Borough Council offices in St Austell to a property developer, so that another supermarket could be built in the town.

In terms of the land in question, the proposal is to sell off three-quarters of it, to knock down perfectly good offices and use the receipt from the sale of the land to build new council offices.

Various claims are being made to justify the sale.

The Council claims that the new office would accommodate existing staff based in St Austell, while the developer (Terrace Hill Properties Limited) is spouting the nonsense that the decision would secure 450 council jobs.

The reality is that there are already less staff in the town than in 2009 while the proposed new building would be much smaller, crammed into the corner of the present site with less parking and, crucially, no space for future expansion if and when we wanted a stronger council presence in the town.

The Council, which is failing to maintain the present building, also argues that the new building would save the Council money because it would be more efficient to run.

Terrace Hill Properties Limited meanwhile claim that hundreds of new jobs will be created. Where have we heard that before?

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I fundamentally disagree with the decision to sell the land, which I consider to short-sighted and lacking in financial sense.

It is my intention to continue to oppose this sale and to argue for Cornwall Council to have a strategy for its buildings that reflects the needs of the authority and its communities – not the profits of developers and supermarkets.

Labour wants regional government for the north of England

A number of Labour MPs from the North of England have raised their concerns about “the growing economic disparities within England as a result of cuts in public services, abolition of the regional development agencies and the coalition-induced recession,” and set out calls for regional government.

This follows the establishment of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation with the core objective to “stimulate debate on the benefits of directly elected regional government for the north

Such a contribution to the growing debate about the inequality between, and the future governance of, the constituent parts of the United Kingdom is to be welcomed. However, it has to be asked why did Labour fail to deliver decent devolution settlements during their thirteen years in power to places such as Cornwall, and the regions of the England.

MK on election trail in Bodmin

Mebyon Kernow is standing in the by-election for a seat on Bodmin Town Council (St Mary’s Ward). The election will take place on 1st March.

Our candidate is Paul Ellis, who lives in the Ward and has the experience and skills to be an effective representative for Bodmin. He worked in education for over thirty years as a teacher, the Vice-Principal of a Sixth Form College, and as business manager for a large Community School.

He is a member of both the Bodmin St Piran’s Committee and the Riding Day Committee. He also set up the North West Bodmin Neighbourhood Watch, of which he is the co-ordinator.

Paul is leading opposition to proposals being promoted in the Bodmin Masterplan for the construction of up to 5,000 new properties in Bodmin over the next twenty years, which he rightly describes as “unsustainable over-development.”

Peter Hain and Labour – ten years late!

The former Labour Government Minister Peter Hain, in a presentation at the London School of Economics, has claimed that Labour’s failure to devolve power to English regions has left a “festering sore.”

Mr Hain is reported as saying: “The English question has never been answered. And I’ve always thought that was a flaw in our approach to devolution and it’s left a kind of festering sore. My view, which fits with my own personal philosophy, is you need to decentralise power within England. England is still a very centralised part of Britain and the abolition of the regional development agencies by the Conservative-Liberal Government [has made it] even more centralised.”

Looking beyond England, he said: “I think the Celtic part of Britain is really important to what Britain is. It’s one of the main reasons why I wouldn’t want Scotland to go independent. I think the Scots would be diminished for it but I think Britain would be diminished for it.

Whatever he says now, I would remind Peter Hain that it was a Labour Government – in which he served as a Minister – that disgracefully ignored 50,000 declarations calling for a Cornish Assembly and then destroyed local government in Cornwall by imposing a unitary authority on us.

Mr Hain, all your fine words are a decade too late and an apology to the people of Cornwall would also be in order.

At this time, there needs to be a mature, respectful and wide-ranging debate about the future of the United Kingdom, and how it is governed. Government needs to address the unequal constitutional relationships between the various nations and regions of the UK, and to tackle the centralising influence of London and the South East of England.

And Mr Hain, will you be there with me making the case for the meaningful devolution of political powers to Cornwall?