{"id":49574,"date":"2021-02-11T12:28:25","date_gmt":"2021-02-11T11:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=49574"},"modified":"2021-02-22T17:10:14","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T16:10:14","slug":"a-new-bill-to-reform-the-nhs-in-england-the-wrong-proposals-at-the-wrong-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/02\/11\/a-new-bill-to-reform-the-nhs-in-england-the-wrong-proposals-at-the-wrong-time\/","title":{"rendered":"A new bill to reform the NHS in England: the wrong proposals at the wrong time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The government\u2019s draft white paper for reform of the NHS in England, which was leaked <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.healthpolicyinsight.com\/?q=node%2F1699\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">on 5 February 2021,<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is a remarkable document\u2014as much for what it does <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">not<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> say, as for what it proposes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Far from reversing the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, as has been widely reported, or responding to the National Audit Office\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nao.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Health-and-social-care-integration.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">finding in 2017<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that \u201cThe Departments have not yet established a robust evidence base to show that integration leads to better outcomes for patients,\u201d the proposals consolidate the market paradigm that the 2012 act strengthened and which the government has favoured during the covid-19 pandemic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The core elements of the disastrous Lansley reforms remain in place: no duty on the government to provide key services throughout England to everybody; entitlement to services dependent on membership, now of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), in the future of \u201cIntegrated Care System (ICS) NHS bodies,\u201d though abolition of CCGs is implied, not expressed; commercial contracts and the purchaser-provider split still the basis for delivering services; foundation trusts still able to receive 49% of their income from outside the NHS; and public health functions and communicable disease control remain outside the NHS.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Apart from the merging of NHS England and NHS Improvement\/Monitor, there are two clear and genuine reversals of the 2012 Act: greater ministerial control over NHS England, and the abolitio<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">n of competition rules, especially the \u201cneedless bureaucracy\u201d of virtually compulsory tendering for clinical services.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The latter is welcome from the perspective of those of us who see no place for a market bureaucracy in the NHS. But far from needless, transparently competing for contracts is the check against corruption and cronyism within a market model. Contracts worth \u00a310.5 billion <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nao.org.uk\/press-release\/investigation-into-government-procurement-during-the-covid-19-pandemic\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">were awarded<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> directly without any competition during the pandemic to the end of July 2020; this will now become the norm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">To replace tendering, a \u201cbespoke health services provider selection regime that will give commissioners greater flexibility in how they arrange services\u201d is proposed. No details are provided and a consultation is promised \u201cshortly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A statutory \u201cICS NHS body\u201d\u2014<\/span><a href=\"blank\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">according to NHS England<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, whose proposals form the \u201cfoundation\u201d of the new bill\u2014will receive a \u201csingle pot budget\u201d which will merge the budgets for general practice with acute and other services. It will \u201ctake on\u201d the CCG and some NHS Engla<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">nd commissioning functions. Its board will include representatives of NHS trusts, local authorities and general practice \u201cand others determined locally.\u201d General practices <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/lowdownnhs.info\/news\/us-takeover-of-a-network-of-gp-practices\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">taken over by US corporations<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> would be included.\u00a0 No controls are proposed over whom the other board members may be. They could therefore include, for example, private hospital groups, nursing home chains and the 67 companies awarded <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk\/notice\/4396060d-ae84-4cb2-af0a-54e74fa5f24a?origin=SearchResults&amp;p=1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">a \u00a310 billion contract<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> last November for NHS inpatient, day case, pathology and imaging services, urgent elective care, cancer treatment, and diagnostic services.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The ICS NHS body will also be required to set up an \u201cICS Health and Care Partnership,\u201d with wider uncontrolled membership, again including the private sector, but without specified functions. The powers of the partnership seem to depend entirely on what the ICS NHS body decides to grant it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Decisions on reconfiguration and funding will be provider driven and at scale, implementing \u201cproposals developed by clinical and operational networks\u201d rather than based on the needs of local communities. This market paradigm is very different from area-based authorities with responsibility for planning, and administering local services to meet local needs. Integrated Care Systems will be able \u201cto delegate significantly to place level and to provider collaboratives,\u201d including the use of \u201cfully-fledged integrated care provider [ICP] contractual models.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Place levels are not defined. Provider collaboratives are not defined either, but are self-determined, with no required local connection and clearly open to multinational private companies and monopoly power. According to NHS England, they will operate within and beyond the ICS playing \u201can active and strong leadership role\u201d and be \u201ca principal engine of transformation\u201d. The opportunity, for example, for private companies to be either or both members of the ICS NHS body, and commissioned to provide services, is obvious. The \u201cstrong recommendation\u201d of the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/publications.parliament.uk\/pa\/cm201719\/cmselect\/cmhealth\/2000\/200008.htm#_idTextAnchor031\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">in June 2019\u2014<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">that legislation should rule out non-statutory providers holding ICP contracts in order to \u201callay fears that [they] provide a vehicle for extending the scope of privatisation\u201d\u2014is not mentioned.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The scene is set for facilitating the introduction and domination of membership providers, a design feature derived from health maintenance and accountable care organisations in the US. This is puzzling as at the same time the government is seeking to weaken the autonomy of foundation trusts through greater controls over capital spend and their ability to reconfigure services.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Transparency, scrutiny and local accountability will suffer. Although current local accountability requirements and mechanisms (such as they are) are based mainly around CCGs and local authorities, in reality these bodies will no longer be the decision-makers. Actual decision-making will be de-coupled from legal functions and the effectiveness of local accountability will be diminished in the process. The leaked document says nothing about this.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The leaked document is also silent on how integration can be achieved coherently when health services are free at the point of delivery and social services are means-tested; when funding is for different populations (GP lists versus local authority); and on how health service funding would be allocated for unregistered CCG residents who might be eligible for local authority funded social services.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">While ignoring fundamental issues of local accountability and universal coverage, the proposals are very clear on the power of central government. The bill would give the government power to intervene earlier in reconfiguration processes, allowing it to smooth the implementation of provider-driven service change. It would also give ministers power to transfer functions between arms-length bodies and to abolish them afterwards without further primary legislation. This would be an astonishing power to by-pass Parliament.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">These proposals are incoherent, de-regulatory, off-target, and badly timed. They will do next to nothing to remedy the serious shortcomings highlighted by the pandemic: a depleted NHS, a privatised social care system, with over-centralised, fragmented and part-privatised communicable disease control and public health systems. Joined-up legislation is needed to revitalise local authorities and to rebuild public services. As David Lock QC <\/span><a href=\"blank\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">said in 2019<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">: \u201cThe big picture is that you have a market system. If you do not want a market system and you want to run a public service, you need a different form of legal structure.\u201d We have provided that structure in the <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nhsbillnow.org\/eleanor-smiths-nhs-bill-published-in-full\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">NHS Reinstatement Bill<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. The case for it is as strong as ever.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Peter Roderick<\/strong>, principal research associate, Newcastle University<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Allyson M. Pollock<\/strong>, professor of public health, Newcastle University<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The authors are co-authors of the NHS Reinstatement Bill. Their fuller response to NHS England\u2019s legislative proposals is <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/AP_2021_Pollock_ICSNextStepsConsultation.pdf\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">here<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. AMP was a member of independent SAGE.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The government\u2019s draft white paper for reform of the NHS in England, which was leaked on 5 February 2021, is a remarkable document\u2014as much for what it does not say, [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/02\/11\/a-new-bill-to-reform-the-nhs-in-england-the-wrong-proposals-at-the-wrong-time\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":38837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[236],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nhs"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A new bill to reform the NHS in England: the wrong proposals at the wrong time - 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