Published: January 18th 2011 - at 9:40 amDepartment of Health not saying where NHS ‘savings’ come from
Yesterday David Cameron told the Today programme:
We are spending £1.4 billion which will save £1.7 billion within two years … We will actually be making net savings within two years in terms of this change
So where has that savings estimate come from?
Fact-checking website Full Fact rang up the Department of Health to ask.
Sadly when we heard back we were told the breakdown of these costs will not be published until later in the week.
Its more staggering that the Today programme itself did not ask where these figures came from.
It seems Cameron has been allowed to quote figures from research not in the public domain.
Full Fact has previously raised concerns about the ability of ministers to quote from research that only they are privy to, which means that claims cannot be scrutinised by either members of the press or public.
The Department for Work and Pensions has withheld information and research on several occasions while allowing it to be quoted by ministers, perhaps selectively.
Unless it is clear how David Cameron has produced those figures, they cannot and should not be taken seriously until they are available for all to see.
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Sunny Hundal is editor of LC. Also: on Twitter, at Pickled Politics and Guardian CIF.
· Other posts by Sunny Hundal
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Reader comments
Beg your pardon Sunny?
You? You are shouting at someone for using bolloxy statistics?
@1. Tim Worstall
So the Prime Minister doesn’t have to justify his figures because of a previous post on this site?
Worth reading:
“NHS reforms are ‘potentially disastrous,’ govt is told”
http://www.pharmatimes.com/Article/11-01-18/NHS_reforms_are_%E2%80%9Cpotentially_disastrous_%E2%80%9D_govt_is_told.aspx
I’ll tell you where one saving is coming from – and I will blog about it in full later. A senior nursing manager has put forward a proposal that will make qualified nurses in hospital outpatients departments redundant, and furthermore proposes that healthcare assistants should take on their responsibilities. Not to belittle HCAs, but I think even they would balk at taking on that work and the level of responsibility that goes with it. Doctors are up in arms about the proposal and have said that it simply means that procedures currently available in outpatients will have to instead be added to the inpatient/surgery queue.
The manager concerned claimed that this – plus many other changes – followed a thorough audit. This is a complete fabrication, as an audit was never done.
Finally, this is not in a far-flung location, this is at one of the most prestigious hospitals in London. If managers are trying to get away with this there – what are they trying to pull in trusts further afield?
That’s desperate, even for you Tim Worstall, and sometimes you take the biscuit for desperate attempts at whataboutery.
Thought you were all about transparency and openness at government level eh?
Lansley just makes up figures.
For example, where does the 45% cut in management come from? No one will say, since *some* of the management that PCTs and SHAs do will be taken over by the GP consortia and the National Commissioning Board (it looks like the SHAs in their entirety will become the regional offices of the NCB, so no savings there).
Let me give you some real figures.
Lansley says that commissioning costs £1.850bn. 45% of this is £850m. Oddly, 55% is exactly £1bn. Hmmm. Doesn’t that sound like a back-of-a-fag-packet calculation to you? Lansley simply says “one billion is a nice round number, let’s make that the amount of money we will spend on commissioning”.
Bear in mind that before 2010 not a single Tory health policy document said that SHAs or PCTs would be abolished. Indeed, all the Tory policy documents said how important these organisations were for the stability of the NHS.
It seems to me that Lansley (rather dangerously) makes things up on the spot. For example, when the white paper was fully analysed GPs became worried that they would have to inherit the debts of the PCTs that they will replace. Some PCTs have large debts, some of which are hidden (“loans” from other PCTs). So he was challenged at a GP meeting in Basingstoke about this and Lansley said that no GP consortia would inherit PCT debt. When the department found out about this they went apeshit: if GPs cannot inherit the debt, who will pay them off? Then a compromise was struck. Any debt before April 2011 will be written off, but debts generated after this date will go to the consortia.
This is why there are so many GPs “enthusiastic” to be pathfinder GP consortia – they want to make sure that they are in control now, and so that they do not inherit any debt when PCTs are abolished.
@1. Tim Worstall
So the Prime Minister doesn’t have to justify his figures because of a previous post on this site?
No. Tim’s remark was about “glasshouses” and motes in people’s eyes.
@7. ukliberty
No – his comment was irrelevant to a serious discussion. How much better to see some real-life examples on this thread.
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Figures regarding NHS "savings" are not available for public scrutiny. We should worry. http://is.gd/P6Zl6d
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RT @stavvers: Figures regarding NHS "savings" are not available for public scrutiny. We should worry. http://is.gd/P6Zl6d
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RT @stavvers: Figures regarding NHS "savings" are not available for public scrutiny. We should worry. http://is.gd/P6Zl6d
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RT @stavvers: Figures regarding NHS "savings" are not available for public scrutiny. We should worry. http://is.gd/P6Zl6d
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RT @stavvers @ThePeasantPoet Figures regarding NHS "savings" are not available for public scrutiny. We should worry. http://is.gd/P6Zl6d
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RT @stavvers: Figures regarding NHS "savings" are not available for public scrutiny. We should worry. http://is.gd/P6Zl6d
- sunny hundal
When will Cameron explain where his figures of NHS 'savings' come from? http://bit.ly/gbMMS7 Why isn't the media asking too?
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