[A-List] UK corporate state: unhealthy accumulation

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Milburn will not 'back off' from hospital reform

Staff and agencies
Wednesday April 30, 2003

The health secretary Alan Milburn will today launch a fierce attack on the
"conservatism" of those in his own party opposed to controversial hospital
reforms.

In a key speech to the Social Market Foundation thinktank, presenting
foundation hospitals as in the Labour tradition, he will also attempt to
counter accusations from backbenchers of elitism by welcoming applications
from smaller hospitals serving poorer communities.

He will echo the prime minister's pledge to reject a "quiet life" in favour
of radical reform and attempt to tackle suggestions that the policy is
elitist and will only benefit large teaching hospitals or those in the leafy
suburbs.

Mr Milburn told Radio 4's Today programme this morning he would not back
down. "It is extremely important and that is why we would bring the bill
forward," he said. "Now is not the time to back off reform. I think that
would be the wrong thing to do.

"I freely admit that of course this is a very, very controversial policy but
I believe it is absolutely fundamentally the right policy," he added.

"There is a very powerful Labour case for making precisely this kind of
reform because ultimately what this is about is ensuring that we have
stronger public services in all parts of our society."

By rejecting freedom, hospitals would play in to the hands of those who want
to scrap the NHS, Mr Milburn claimed.

"Unless we can get these hospitals to have greater freedom from day-to-day
Whitehall control we will not get the greater local innovation and
responsiveness we need," he said.

"That can only give succour to those people, including our political
opponents the Conservatives, who believe that the National Health Service
should not be supported but should be abandoned."

The foundation hospital bids Mr Milburn is expected to mention include:
Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS trust; City Hospitals Sunderland NHS trust;
Doncaster and Bassetlaw hospitals NHS trust; North Tees and Hartlepool NHS
trust; Bradford Hospitals NHS trust; Rotherham General hospitals NHS trust
and Homerton hospital NHS Trust.

A Commons motion opposing foundation hospitals has been signed by around 130
backbench Labour MPs, about half of those free to do so.

David Taylor, Labour MP for north-west Leicestershire, also speaking on the
Today programme, said: "I just feel that it can't work. It is more of an
American model which is rooted heavily in a market morality, that it draws
on private sector provision," he said.

"Quite why we are attracted as a government by this concept is impossible
for me to divine and that is true of the 133 backbenchers who have signed."

The Liberal Democrats have pledged to vote against foundation hospitals and
Mr Blair may need Tory votes to pass the bill, but shadow health secretary
Liam Fox warned that while his party backed the principle they might not be
forthcoming.

"The bill itself is a bit of a dog's breakfast and it is not really the job
of the Conservative party to ensure the government gets its legislative
programme," Dr Fox said.

"Here we have a government with a huge majority in parliament dependent on
the main opposition party to get its domestic flagship bill through. What a
mess that is."

Former Labour arts minister Mark Fisher warned Mr Blair to back off. "The
most important thing is that he recognises that at this moment and in this
form these proposals do not convince the parliamentary Labour party and if
that is the case I hope he will think again," he told Today.