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News and comment from Roy Lilley |
| It looks like Tarzan has lived up to his name. The NHS' very own Indiana Jones might be more appropriate. You wouldn't want to play Russian Roulette with Simon Stevens and I would suggest arm wrestling might be ill advised. Chess? No, prepare to be caught in the Latvian Gambit. I don't think I'd take him on at Snakes and Ladders. A month ago the Treasury were flatly refusing to front-load NHS funding. Now, they've coughed up nearly £4bn. Stevens knows enough to take on the Treasury on at their own game. A previous career in Downing Street has made him uniquely qualified. He acts like a manager but thinks like a politician. Who would deny he is the most powerful operator in Whitehall. There are Ministers who are quietly envious. Stevens has promised a solution to politician's greatest conundrum; what to do about the health service. Fingers crossed, eh! Years of austerity have hobbled the NHS. Just about every key indicator is going south and the bodged efforts to change the Junior doctors' contract have distilled into toxic waste. Hunt is drowning in a mess of his own making. A nice fat bung from the Chancellor is designed to bail-out the NHS in the medium term and portray the docs as self serving. Yes, £4bn is not enough but how much is enough? Look at the police and local government and feel lucky, grateful, thankful, relieved... take your pick. I'm hearing LAs will be given a hypothecated power to raise and ring fence a preservation tax for care homes. Student nurses are likely to end up like every other graduate... in debt. Public Health England will have to learn to be just as useless as they are now but on less money. Actually a little bird told me that the DH and the BMA are talking and to expect a result next week. The Chancellor has done the only thing, the right thing... whatever. The DH, on the other hand, has been irritating beyond belief. This is in their press release. Talking of the £4bn, they say: ".... additional funding will allow the NHS to offer 800,000 more operations and treatments, 2 million more diagnostic tests, 5.5 million more outpatient appointments and spend up to £2 billion more on new drugs that patients need." No! It will allow the NHS to keep the lights on, pay the bills and if we are lucky, invest in turning the Vanguards into operational, replicable, scaleable reality. The DH press office add nothing to communication, understanding, reality or dare I say truth. If we are looking into saving money, disinvesting in peripheral bits and bobs that don't make the patient facing front-line of health care better, smarter and more productive, may I suggest we let the Conservative Party pay for the DH press office. If we are doing their work, they could, at least, have the decency to pay for it.
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