CNJ COMMENT - Lansley: Are you as good as your word on Whittington?

Published: 23 June, 2011

THE firm impression given by the media – geared up by the PR machine at No 10 Downing Street – is that  the Prime Minister has listened to critics of the proposed NHS reforms and, in effect, completed a U-turn.

Embarrassing “pauses” and serial amendments to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s flagship Health and Social Care Bill have had to be made.

But any sense of euphoria or victory should be tempered.

In Lansley’s speech to the House of Commons on June 14, he announced his intention to “make it illegal to encourage the growth of one type of provider over another”.

That is the very opposite of former Labour minister Andy Burnham’s assurance in 2009 that “the NHS would be the preferred provider.”

As the reforms unroll in the coming months and years, a more pressing problem faces Londoners. These are the drastic and very imminent cuts to the sums of hard cash 

available to the North Central London NHS sector.

Almost two thirds of the budget for patient services – around ￡230million – is being wiped off the slate.

The costly business of staffing and running a hospital accident and emergency department, and providing staffed ambulances will once 

again be eyed up for the axe.

Anyone in doubt that this is what is being proposed need look no further than the sudden wave of comment pieces from experts about the need to close hospitals and A&E departments in London.

The cuts at NCL NHS, due to be signed off today (Thursday) by its board, are far greater than when the emergency services at the Whittington Hospital were first threatened in 2009. 

Does the passion, which drew thousands out onto the streets to save the hospital, remain in these austere times? 

When thousands are losing their jobs and entire hospitals are closing, will the NHS seem as important?

Before the general election in 2010, Lansley stood outside the hospital and, looking directly into a film camera from this newspaper, said: “I can say that, if I am elected secretary of state, the Whittington A&E department will be safe.”

Can we hold him to his word?