Healey: Lansley’s ‘rogue department’
John Healey, shadow health secretary, comments on today’s health select committee’s report, on NHS and social care public expenditure:
“The select committee has rightly raised very serious concerns about Andrew Lansley’s plans for the health service.
“The last thing the NHS needs is a high-cost, high-risk reorganisation at a time when, in the government’s own words, it is attempting to make ‘unprecedented’ efficiency savings.
“But of equal concern is that the plans follow promises made both before the election and in the coalition agreement that there would be no more top down reorganisations in the NHS – promises that have now been broken by a health secretary operating in isolation in Whitehall and running a rogue department.
“The committee is also right to highlight concerns it has with the funding of adult social care. As well as double counting £1 billion a year as money both for the NHS and social care, Ministers are trying to claim that councils, despite yesterday’s announcement of significant cuts, will be able to sustain current eligibility levels for care for elderly and disabled people – a claim the committee calls into serious question.”
