CNJ COMMENT - Care to rethink your plans for these private homes?

Published: 9 June, 2011

HEALTH care and the profit motive do not mix.

Witness the debacle over the hundreds of homes for the elderly run by the company Southern Cross which could go into administration.

This company was originally set up by an American investor who, understandably as a businessman, wanted one thing – and one thing only – to reach the highest profit level possible.

He could smell a high profit because rents for the buildings occupied by the care home company throughout the country were gilt-edged, guaranteed to be paid by local authorities, in other words by the state. 

And, unlike private companies, neither local authorities, nor the state for that matter, will ever go bankrupt.

No wonder the US money man knew he was on to a winner.

But he didn’t reckon on the financial crisis, and the fall in rent levels provided by local authorities under the lash of Whitehall.

Before the Southern Cross scandal the mantra repeated ad-nauseum by New Labourites, as well as the present government, was: “Public bad, Private good.”

Why, we wonder, is that mantra hardly heard in the public arena today?

Has that got anything to do with Southern Cross, and the tactical retreat of David Cameron over the NHS storm?

Yet Labour seems to have its head in the sand.

Referring to the Winterbourne View home scandal exposed by Panorama, the junior shadow health spokeswoman, Emily Thornberry, confidently emphasised that state intervention was out of the question. The “ship of state provision” has “sailed”, said the Islington South MP.

Fortunately, our MP Glenda Jackson doesn’t mind sticking her neck out.

She does want care homes to go under local authority control. But senior Camden councillor Pat Callaghan appears to be in two minds. State control is preferable, she says, but where will the money come from?

This general approach to social care was born in the Thatcher era. It’s about time it was put to rest.

How do you measure the value of a life? That should be uppermost in our minds.

We also suggest the council should take another look at its plans to allow private companies to run new homes earmarked for Maitland Park and Wellesley Road.

No doubt the business plan for these homes look sound.

But then little was found wrong with Southern Cross – until the unpredicted financial crisis swept our way.