government steamrollered through the legislation for student top-up fees.
What is the connection? Both policies represent New Labour's total capitulation both to the neoliberal logic of free market capitalism and to the use of market-style methods in order to run public services.
While top-up fees seek to turn students
customers, shopping around the Universities for a package of learning they can afford - and then lumbered with decades of debt when they finish their course - Foundation Trusts aim to turn local hospitals into entrepreneurial businesses, luring in additional patients (and revenue) and striking new deals with for-profit private companies.
Both policies have only squeezed through Parliament by a wafer-thin majority after dividing Labour back-benchers into those retaining a modicum of social-democratic politics and New Labour hand-raisers willing to vote any way they are told by Blair's ministers.
The smallest majority was for the top-up fees, despite a succession of concessions by Education Secretary Charles Clarke, including the restoration of a so-called "maintenance grant" - which of course is simply an dditional loan, (at É1,000 too small for any ... .... Foundation Trusts are the spearhead for a revival of a new competitive internal market system very similar to the discredited plans Labour scrapped in 1997
Ministerial blackmail aimed at forcing MPs into line has been backed up by most university vice chancellors, taking it in turn to claim ever higher levels of under-funding of higher education, and arguing that only the top-up fees, and no other policy, can bridge the gap.
In fact the opposite is the case. The underfunding dates back to the Tory years in which universities were starved of funding: and top-up fees are quite useless as a solution, generating too little, too late.
The only swift, sure and fair way to inject funds into the system is through the very policy that New Labour is most determined to resist - the extension of progressive taxation, with the largest share being paid by those on the highest incomes
This would generate additional revenue immediately, instead of three or four years down the line when next September's undergraduates emerge on the jobs market saddled with debts totalling tens of thousands.
And it could generate sufficient money to meet the gap in university funding, rather than the small fraction of that gap that will be spanned by top-up fees. N obody yet knows how much electoral damage Blair will suffer as a result of the fees policy: but it is already clear that his hopes of winning public support on the basis of the government's record in pumping extra funds into the NHS have badly misfired. Too much of the cash has been spent unwisely, and the latest reorganisation is a further example of waste and bureaucracy.
Foundation Trusts are the spearhead for a revival of a new competitive internal market system very similar to the discredited plans Labour scrapped in 1997.
From April 1 an increasing section of NHS work will be financed on a "payment by results" system, in which hospitals receive a fixed fee for each operation they carry out. Well-resourced hospitals - and high-rolling Foundation Trusts - will enjoy an instant advantage, and will be able to compete for • additional contracts to treat patients who might otherwise go to other hospitals. The money will, as Thatcher memorably summed up, "follow the patient": Trusts that are already struggling to cope will find their income reduced, while those with spare capacity can coin in extra cash.
Among the hospitals caught in the middle will be the new generation of hospitals built since 1997 under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Many of these have sky-high costs in lease payments, and too few beds to cope with local demand. Many are already facing large deficits, and some are diverting patients to other NHS hospitals, or even to private hospitals, as they struggle to hit their waiting list targets for fear of incurring more financial penalties. Foundation Trusts will be able to scoop up and retain surplus funds under this new sysSTOP IF265
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Stem, competing not only for patients but also for nursing and other staff. The new "independent regulator" charged with scrutinising Foundation Trusts banker Bill Moyes, has already insisted that he will maintain a "light touch": and he has no obligation to ensure a full range of services are available in every area And to make matters worse New Labour is also setting up a network of private "treatment centres", run by for-profit companies, that will deliver treatment for NHS patients at the expense of existing NHS hospitals: the money to pay the higher cost of these operations will be milked from the cash-limited funds of local Primary Care Trusts, which have been denied any voice in the new scheme. A two-tier system beckons in both health GRA NOT FEE NOTE and education: elite universities will be f ing for higher top-up fees, while the top forming Trusts which become Founda are offered preferential access to loan slush funds to get them through the i duction of the new NHS market as Trusts watch funds draining from their l ets
Labour MPs had the chance to sto nonsense and force back Blair's agen privatisation, marketisation and dere tion: they failed to do so
The next chance for the electora deliver its verdict on these wretched pr will be in the European elections in That's why it is vital to maximise th vote, to demand Respect in place of the tempt we have been shown by Blair ar New Labour cronies
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