"poaching" staff from other Trusts. But - as unions found out with some of the Tory Trusts that imposed local pay settlements -pay can be varied downwards as well as up.
And they will be given a guarantee of independence from legal direction by the Secretary of State - raising serious questions over the extent to which they can be prevented from using these other freedoms in ways which poach patients and staff, and thus threaten the viability and survival of other Trusts.
Despite all the unpleasant echoes of the Tory 'reforms' which first created the internal market within the NHS, establishing the bureaucratic and wasteful "purchaser provider split", Mr Milburn has insisted that • • • • the Foundation Trusts will be non-profit making bodies, with their assets "locked" to prevent Foundations being privatised at a later stage.
But what of a Foundation Hospital that is already owned by a private consortium through PFI? What protection would there be against it being converted into a straightforward business, selling care to the NHS, with profits bolstered by its local monopoly
••
Mr Milburn should take warning from the experience of the first foundation-style hospital experiment in Sweden, where St Gorans, a major hospital in Stockholm was privatised by its board - against the wishes of the local health authority and the government.
Are has already retreated in front of those warning that Foundations I would (like the first wave NHS Trusts in the Tory reforms) seek to expand their treatment of private patients and numbers of private beds
Milburn has insisted that they would be prevented from doing so, and that applications will be preferred which propose to switch existing pay-beds back to treat NHS patients: it is not clear if any such plans exist.
He has also argued that Foundations will remain "part of the NHS", and that they will be controlled by elected "stakeholder" members from the local community, who would elect representatives to comprise a majority of a Board of Governors.
However the real power would remain in the hands of an unelected Management Board, and the extent to which local stakeholders would actually influence the day to day running of the Trusts - if at all - is not clear.
There are also big questions to be answered over the extent to which such "stakeholders" groups would be representative of anybody, let alone the ethnic and social mix of the communities they cover.
The probability is that control freakery
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Most refugees are fleeing war and oppression around the world, often dished out by brutal regimes allied to the US and Britain Home news/asylum crackdown DISPOSORDA
& EXILE 1X300 POP, 5,200
Soclal reached Britain, was creating queues of upwards of 1000 people waiting in freezing conditions outside Lunar House in Croydon to register.
Interviews were taking much longer than usual, the Home Office outpost was working until midnight to deal with the numbers, and five people waiting outside had collapsed and been taken to hospital with hypothermia.
A volunteer soup kitchen had been set up to give people elementary sustenance, but ance February 2003 5
There is no national campaign against these new draconian measures, but there have been several demonstrations against them in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Bristol. Several voluntary groups and campaigns have collaborated on a joint statement opposing the measures which could form the basis of a campaign to force the government to withdraw them, just as the voucher scheme was withdrawn.
In addition, solicitors for two asylum seekers, an Iranian and an Angolan, who have been refused support under section 55