Reviewing the Department of Health’s White Paper, on which the bill is based, last year the Conservative Bow Group said:

“A quick retrospective review of government policy since 1948 suggests there has not been a White Paper as reformist and radical as the current Government’s opening offering. For those who feared a meek and mild Government that would do nothing more than tinker and blinker with a discredited status quo, all fears have been allayed by this aspirational document.”

The Lancet in their latest editorial were even more blunt. Comapring the proposed changes to those of the fundholding experiment in the 1990s they said:

“The principle then was that GPs controlled the budgets to buy the specialist care their patients needed. Fundholding took years to implement, but evidence on short-term or long-term benefits for patients is lacking….there is sufficient  uncertainty and concern about the changes outlined in the Health and Social Care Bill to pause, to learn from the past, and to consider what the changes mean for patients’ outcomes. As it stands, the UK Government’s new Bill spells the end of the NHS.” (emphasis added)

They described the Conservatives claim to be “the Party of the NHS” as “a commitment that seems particularly hollow now.”

The BMA, whilst welcoming some of the changes such as a greater focus on public health, are also highly sceptical of many of the proposed alterations to our health service:

“Enforcing competition and adding price into the competitive mix within the NHS will always be damaging – doing so at a time of huge pressure on public finances and while staff are dealing with major structural change could be disastrous. The NHS needs to find efficiency savings of £20 billion by 2014-15. This is already resulting in cuts to services and staff, which have a direct impact on patient care.”

“The BMA is opposed to the idea that all NHS trusts should be forced to become foundation trusts by 1 April 2014, given the poor outcomes that have resulted in a small number of cases. Intensifying the pressure to achieve foundation trust status within the next three years could distort priorities and drive trusts to place the achievement of this target above all others, including safe patient care.”

The Health and Social care bill will radically alter the structure of the NHS and set us on course for a privately provided service. Management will be first to go, but the changes to Foundation Trusts and the desire to increase the number of social enterprises will mean that Hospitals and other services won’t be far behind. Check out this excellent video from Richard Blogger to see how:

What’s more, these changes will be forced through whilst overselling the need for reform at all. We’re told by the government that the biggest risk is to do nothing, that the NHS is inefficient and our health outcomes are worse than elsewhere. John Appleby, chief economist at the King’s Fund, writing in the BMJ last week, however, analysed mortality rates in the UK to discover that whilst our death rate from heart disease is indeed higher than that of France right now, on current trends we will be lower by next year. We’ll achieve that whilst spending just 8.7% of GDP on health compared with 11.2% in France. Other data paint a similar picture.

Our NHS can always be made better but it’s one of the most efficient in the world as it is, don’t let the coalition destroy it through their ideological attacks. Keep Our NHS public

First of all, science. This is one area where, as has been well pointed out, a lot of people who might otherwise support us have a real problem, myself included. Fortunately, it looks like this might soon be changing. This conference we’ll be voting to begin a full review of our science policy and, in a separate motion, to remove the embarrassing and patronising policy we currently have requiring all scientists and technologists to take an oath to respect the Earth.

As was pointed out during the workshop before the vote, we don’t require bankers to pledge not to ruin the economy, or politicians, or, indeed, any other profession. Singling our scientists and technologists in this way, which would not, in fact, have any real effect in reducing harmful practices, makes us look anti-science, it undermines our efforts to promote understanding of and defend climate science and it puts people off. At a time when the other parties are attacking academic research, through cuts and the IMPACT agenda, when the top ten Tory bloggers don’t believe in man made climate change, we should be the natural home of scientists. But one or two policies put people off, they give a misleading impression of our attitude to science and offer the media and our opponents an easy stick with which to beat us.

Fortunately, as I write this, we’ve just voted overwhelmingly to remove that pledge. It’s a good start. We voted without any opposition to begin the review of science policy too and hopefully we’ll bring something more consistent, more sensible and more appealing to the science community to conference in the Autumn or next Spring. And hopefully it’ll pass just as easily as the two motions this conference.

Of course, science isn’t the only area of policy we’re looking at this year. Yesterday we also voted to pass a maximum wage. No person could earn more than ten times that of the lowest paid employee (pro rata) in any company. We’d also ban bonuses larger than the yearly pay of the lowest paid in the company. A factor of 10 seems a reasonable differential to me. One concern, however, raised during the debate as a reason to refer the motion back for further work, might be that if implemented at a company level lower paid workers could simply be contracted out, or a company even split into two, one for the workers and one for the management. A national maximum wage, calculated against the national median or mean wage, might, therefore, be more sensible. That view didn’t prevail though. Darren Johnson, London AM, told us he hadn’t supported previous proposals for a national 100% income tax rate at some level but did, enthusiastically, support this motion. He told us we don’t need all the technical details in the MFSS (the English and Welsh party’s policy reference document), just broad principles. And, as Caroline Lucus told us in her speech this morning, the top 10% of the country are now have 100x the wealth of the bottom 10%. A maximum wage could go someway to reducing this inequality and might well prove popular in the current climate.

Emergency Motions!
Just the two emergency motions yesterday. Conference unanimously backed Billy Bragg’s campaign against bonuses at state-owned bank RBS and the BMA’s campaign against the commercialisation of our health service. As an amendment to that it was also noted that the RCN (Royal College of Nursing) have a similar campaign too.

So an exciting day one. Lots more motions today. I’ll try to keep you all up-to-date with what’s going on with those.