Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

Milburn lays foundations of new health market

by John Lister  |  Socialist Resistance no3  |  page 4

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

John Lister, London Health Emergency

Health Secretary Alan Milburn is doggedly pressing through his / controversial plans for "Foundation Trusts", which will give new powers and privileges to ten or a dozen of the country's top-rated "3-star" hospitals.

The plan has been denounced by health unions and by the BMA as a return to the type of market-style methods wheeled in by Margaret Thatcher's government in the early 1990s, and which Labour ministers claimed to have swept away after 1997.

Former health secretary Frank Dobson and other former ministers have also attacked the plan for precisely these reasons, pointing out that the new "freedoms" to be granted to Foundation Trusts could only be at the expense of the majority of NHS Trusts that have been excluded from the elite status.

Foundation Trusts will have extra freedoms to borrow, including from the private sector - but their borrowing will count against the total cash limits on the NHS, and so their extra investment will mean less capital for maintenance or new building in other Trusts. ••• Name this man and win fIO! IN OUR first-ever competition in Socialist Resistance, all you have to do is identify this man, and send the details, with your name and address to us at: Socialist Resistance, PO Box 1109, London N4 200. Any correct entries will go in the hat for a prize of a crisp £10 note. But while you're at it, why not write us a letter - or let us have your comments on the paper and how it might be improved? Don't ask him for money ... unless you are a private hospital!

Foundations will be free to retain any cash raised from the sale of Trust property assets, prompting fears that some may embark on a new round of asset-stripping.

They will be free to set up private companies that ofter managerial

and other services inside or outside the NHS and which can bid to run neighbouring "failing" Trusts under the government's franchising scheme.

They will also have freedoms to vary the pay of their staff, giving scope in some areas to offer more to recruit staff with particular