Spare us the gimmicks Wes Streeting, NHS reforms are just a trojan horse for contracts to be given to private health businesses - Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Gareth Robson, Kent House Road, Beckenham.

Once again the NHS faces the trojan horse of ‘reform’. The pages of The Yorkshire Post have been and will continue to be filled by government puff (such as the Health Secretary's comments under ‘Politics and Economy’ at the top of page four on January 6).

"If the wealthy can choose where and when they are treated then working-class patients should be able to as well".

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That statement belongs to the realm of political philosophy - let's test it by saying ‘if the wealthy can have expensive foreign holidays several times a year, then working-class people should be able to as well’. Do we see the problem?

Health Secretary Wes Streeting speaking to the media. PIC: Ben Whitley/PA WireHealth Secretary Wes Streeting speaking to the media. PIC: Ben Whitley/PA Wire
Health Secretary Wes Streeting speaking to the media. PIC: Ben Whitley/PA Wire

But more importantly, what is actually going on below the surface, below these find-sounding aspirations? Well it's not hard to work out, because Streeting has made no secret of his plan to give contracts to private health businesses to do work for the NHS. But oh so cleverly disguised under the banner of "choice" and "you can get the same service as the wealthy".

His other big push, currently in the media, is for a new NHS app which apparently is going to be so much better than the current one.

Nonsense - nothing more than window-dressing, a private fly-by-night software company has shown him a mock-up of a new sexy app and won itself a handsome contract to deliver it.

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GP practices are still private businesses, let's not forget. This is why no NHS app can work for even the simplest things such as getting an appointment - because each GP already has their own app for bookings (eg ‘Patient Access’ as offered by my local GP practice).

Doubtless the new app will steer us towards private providers rather than our GPs wherever such provision is available in our region and doubtless it will disguise what it's doing.

It's a gigantic mess, the poor old NHS deserves better than to be weighed down by ever more gimmicks and to be forced to endure ever more competition, usually for the easiest and most profitable services it provides.

Instead of reading puff from ministers I would dearly love to hear cogent explanations from the heads of the NHS, and from the top civil servants, with their views on what the priorities are and how to fix them, but sadly this is not the way the system works; the politicians have an absolute monopoly on public relations on behalf of our state and they abuse this monopoly for their own advancement and for their party's electoral prospects. We really are all at sea.

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