NHS shake-up risks repeating past mistakes – Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Rosalyn Cousins, Eastfield Road, Pickering.
Is now the right time to reorganise the NHS?Is now the right time to reorganise the NHS?
Is now the right time to reorganise the NHS?

I NOTE with interest MP Kevin Hollinrake’s enthusiasm on Twitter for the new Health and Care White Paper.

Coming only nine years 
after the Conservative government’s last NHS reorganisation, the new plans reverse some of the key changes imposed in 2012.

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The decision to inflict major change on an exhausted NHS in the midst of a global pandemic suggests the Government realises how much its £4bn 2012 reorganisation was mistaken.

Thirsk and Malton MP Kevin Hollinrake.Thirsk and Malton MP Kevin Hollinrake.
Thirsk and Malton MP Kevin Hollinrake.

In the new proposals, the shift from competition to collaboration is welcome.

The Secretary of State will have greater powers to intervene in our local health service, 
which at least gives us someone to hold to account if things go awry.

But many important details are missing and we need our MP to be transparent about what it means for his constituents.

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If Matt Hancock can override local decisions about opening and closing hospitals, how will that fit with giving local areas greater flexibility to respond to local needs?

The planned NHS reorganisation is prompting much debate.The planned NHS reorganisation is prompting much debate.
The planned NHS reorganisation is prompting much debate.

How much of our NHS will still be open to for-profit private providers?

And crucially – how much will this all cost the taxpayer?

The challenge for Mr Hollinrake and his party, 
post-Brexit, mid-pandemic, is not to throw another £4bn of our taxes on vanity reorganisations then support a Tory U-turn in the next decade.

The NHS deserves better.

From: Roger Backhouse, Upper Poppleton, York.

IMRAN Ahmad Khan MP has remarkable cheek to claim “the Conservative Party is the only party that can be truly relied on to support our police force” (The Yorkshire Post, February 15).

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Increases in police funding numbers barely make up for cuts to police forces carried out under the Conservative-led coalition.

No support then, police numbers fell by 20 per cent. Back in 2017 Labour under Jeremy Corbyn proposed to reinstate police budgets, unlike the Conservatives, an unexpected move helping Labour gain seats in that election.

We’re seeing a pattern of this Government reversing decisions made not long ago by other Conservative Governments.

The recent White Paper on the NHS proposes undoing the reforms introduced by the former Conservative minister Andrew Lansley.

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Unfortunately it won’t reverse the budget cuts for poorer areas his “reforms” caused. Just another administrative reshuffle.

Sadly, we won’t get an apology for the blunders made by previous Conservative governments and doubtless this Government will add more of its own.

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