Sunday, January 30, 2011

For and against NHS reform - in their own words

UPDATE: New book due out in April "THE PLOT AGAINST THE NHS" by Colin Leys & Stewart Player, promises to expose the creeping privatisation of the NHS. A previous Colin Leys book "Market Driven Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest" (reviewed in detail here) concluded that the marketising of health and public broadcasting was "incompatible with democracy and, in the long run, with civilised life."
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The government's disastrous Health and Social Care Bill has its second reading in parliament tomorrow, Monday. There will be a debate and a vote, after which the Bill can proceed to the committee stage and be picked apart clause by clause by MPs on the health committee.

Under "read more" below you will find two documents that set out the cases for and against.

The first is a government Q&A note written to help health ministers defend the Bill against its many critics. In an Orwellian flourish, the questions and answers are referred to as "myths and facts" (my favourites are Myths 4 and 10, so brief, so flimsy).

The second is a briefing note prepared by Unison, the public service trade union, challenging specific clauses in the Bill. If you don't want to read the whole document, a summary of Unison's main arguments is here.


GOVERNMENT Q&A DOCUMENT [note, a point-by-point rebuttal by Unison of the claims in this document can be found here]


Modernising the NHS: the Health and Social Care Bill

1. Summary

The Health and Social Care Bill will modernise the NHS to give every patient the best
chance of surviving an illness like cancer, and the best quality of life if they have a
long-term condition like diabetes.

We want the NHS to be there for everyone, free-of-charge, and based on need

and not ability to pay. That is why we are increasing spending on the NHS above

inflation year after year - something that Labour opposes.

Our ambition is simple – to deliver care for patients which is the best of

anywhere in the world, on the NHS. Despite the best efforts of staff, the NHS does

not achieve this now:

• Someone in this country is twice as likely to die from a heart attack as someone in

France

• Survival rates for cervical, colorectal and breast cancer are amongst the worst in

the OECD

• Premature mortality rates from respiratory disease are worse than the EU-15

average

That is why we need to modernise the NHS. Our plans:

• Cut managers, waste and bureaucracy, and give extra money to front line

services to pay for things like the Cancer Drugs Fund, which is already giving

hundreds of patients access to the drugs they need.

• Give control over NHS services to frontline doctors and nurses and take it out

of the hands of ministers and managers, so that patients get the best possible care.

• Give local communities powers to stop forced and unwanted closures of A&E

and maternity services.

• Inject real democratic legitimacy into the NHS for the first time in almost 40

years through the creation of Health and Wellbeing Boards, which will drive the

integration of health and social care.

• Focus the NHS on the results it actually delivers for patients by allowing the

best people – whether from the public, independent or charitable sectors – to

deliver the care which patients need.

Because we are handing over power to patients, frontline doctors and nurses, and

local communities, we will be able to make £5 billion of administrative savings

over the coming years – all of which we will plough straight back into patient care.

This is equivalent to over 40,000 extra nurses, 17,000 extra doctors or over 11,000

extra consultants every year.


2. How will care improve?

The Coalition’s plans to modernise the NHS will give patients the best-possible care,

on the NHS.

• When a local hospital feels that they can provide diagnostic tests more

conveniently to patients in the community, they will be free to do so.

• If local GPs see that there is a significant need for physiotherapy services in their

local area, they will be able to organise local clinics for their patients – rather than

giving them a default option of having to travel to a hospital miles away.

• When a GP feels that a patient with serious diabetes is in danger of not managing

it effectively, they will be able to make sure the patient has the support to remain

independent – preventing unnecessary emergency admissions to hospital.

• When frontline nurses feel that they can deliver better care to autistic children in

partnership with a local charity, they will be free to make this happen.

• When a local community decides that they want a new health clinic or walk-in

centre, their local council will be able to work with the local NHS to help achieve

this.

3. Our modernisation plans in detail

The Coalition Government’s plans will modernise the NHS:

• The power and responsibility for decisions about NHS services will be transferred

into the hands of doctors and nurses at the frontline, instead of remote

organisations few people have heard of. This means that the NHS’s money will no

longer be spent by ‘Primary Care Trusts’, but instead by groups of GPs working in

partnership. And it will mean that hospitals and other health services become

‘Foundation Trusts’, which are free from central government interference.

• To prevent political micromanagement, which has damaged patient care,

responsibility for overseeing the NHS at the national level will be passed to an

independent NHS body – the NHS Commissioning Board. This will stop

politicians constantly interfering in the NHS. And we will do away with the topdown

targets which do not improve care. We will instead focus on what matters to

patients the results and quality of care. This means whether they survive cancer,

whether they get seen when they need to be, and whether they are supported to

remain in work.

• To give local communities more power, we will establish health and wellbeing

boards in all local councils, with the responsibility of planning local services,

jointly with the NHS and social services. These boards will publish a new ‘health

and wellbeing strategy’, setting out the ways in which local NHS and social

services will be improved in every local area.

• To give patients more power, we will allow them to choose to be treated anywhere

they want which meets NHS standards, so long as the treatment doesn’t cost more

than it would do on the NHS. This means that charities and social enterprises will

be able to provide services to NHS patients, free of charge, either together with

the NHS or on their own. It also means that the private sector will be able to

provide NHS services free-of-charge, and we will establish a strong economic

regulator to make sure that no-one is behaving unfairly. Any decision about where

to be treated will be for the patient himself or herself, in partnership with their

doctor, and as now no-one will pay for their NHS care.

To help patients and GPs decide where the best services are, we will give everyone

more information about the quality of care each hospital and health service delivers.

And we will establish a powerful new watchdog – HealthWatch – which will make

sure that patients’ views about their local NHS and social services are listened to.


Myths

Myth 1 The NHS is being cut.

Fact

We are increasing the NHS budget above inflation year-after-year – something which

Labour opposes But this does not mean that we can continue to put up with inefficient

services, because of the rising demands on the NHS due to an ageing population and

better technologies. That is why we are modernising the NHS – but any savings we

make will be ploughed straight back into patient care.

Myth 2 The changes weren’t in either of your parties’ manifestos

Fact

They were in both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat manifestos.

The Conservative manifesto (p. 46) promised that GPs would be given control over

the health service budget. The Conservative manifesto (p. 45) promised that every

Trust would be made a Foundation Trust. Both the Conservative (p. 27) and Liberal

Democrat (p. 42) manifestos promised that new social enterprises would be created to

deliver NHS services. The Conservative (p. 45) and Liberal Democrat (p.42)

manifestos promised that all types of providers – NHS, voluntary, or independent

sector – would be free to deliver NHS services. An independent NHS Board was

promised in the Conservative manifesto (p. 46). Scrapping central, politicallymotivated

targets was promised in both the Conservative (p.46) and Liberal Democrat

(p. 42) manifestos. Cutting back on unnecessary administrative costs was included in

both the Conservative (p. 46) and Liberal Democrat (pp. 40-41) manifestos.

Myth 3 The NHS doesn’t need any change.

Fact

Someone in this country is twice as likely to die from a heart attack as someone in

France. Survival rates for some cancers are amongst the worst in the OECD.

Premature mortality rates from respiratory disease are worse than the European

average. The number of managers in the NHS doubled under Labour, and productivity

went down year-on-year.

Myth 4 These changes represent the privatisation of the NHS.

Fact

We will never privatise the NHS. The NHS will always be there for everyone who

needs it, funded from general taxation, and based on need and not ability to pay.

Myth 5 Private hospitals will take over the NHS.

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Fact

We want patients to be able to choose to be treated wherever they want to be –

whether it’s an NHS hospital, or one in the voluntary or private sectors. This is

because more choice and more competition will lead to benefits for patients. But we

don’t want to set a target for the amount of private sector involvement in the NHS –

unlike Labour – and unlike Labour we won’t pay the private sector any more than we

would pay the NHS. And we will establish a powerful new regulator to enforce these

rules.

Myth 6 GP consortia will be forced to use the private sector

Fact

It will be up to GP consortia to decide their own arrangements.

Myth 7 Every NHS service will need to be competitively tendered.

Fact

Our plans for ‘any willing provider’ are precisely the opposite. Competitive tendering

means identifying a single provider to offer a service exclusively. ‘Any willing

provider’ means being clear that a service needs to meet NHS standards and NHS

costs, and then allowing patients to choose themselves wherever they want to be

treated. It is designed to avoid the need for costly tendering processes, unlike

Labour’s ‘independent sector treatment centres’.

Myth 8 The policy of price competition in the NHS will lead to a “race to the

bottom” on quality

Fact

Patients won’t know how much a service costs, because NHS services are free at the

point of use. Patients will therefore choose to be treated at the highest-quality

provider. There will be competition on quality, not price.

Where prices can be reduced, in agreement with both frontline GPs and with those

offering the service, we will allow it in certain cases. This is the policy Labour set out

in 2009, when in government (Department of Health, NHS Operating Framework

2010-11 (paragraph 3.44), 16 December 2009).

Myth 9 Introducing competition will destroy integrated care

Fact

Allowing patients to choose the best care package for them, in consultation with their

doctor, will drive integration. And there is nothing in our plans that will stop GPs

working with clinicians from hospitals – or to stop hospitals working with other

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hospitals – to plan ways in which patient care can be improved. Indeed, the Health

and Social Care Bill creates a new duty to promote integration.

Myth 10 Private providers will just cherry-pick the easiest cases, undercutting

the NHS

Fact

The less complex the procedure, the less someone – including in the private sector –

will be paid. Unlike Labour, we will not rig the market in favour of the private sector.

Myth 11 The NHS will cease to be a single, national organisation.

Fact

The NHS has never been a single, national organisation. It has always been made up

of hundreds and thousands of different organisations and individuals – many of them

from the independent sector – providing care free at the point of use and based on

need and not ability to pay. This will not change.

Myth 12 These changes will cost £3 billion

Fact

The one-off cost of our changes will be £1.4 billion, of which £1 billion are the costs

associated with reducing the size of the NHS bureaucracy – a reduction that is needed

to honour both parties’ promises to reduce the cost of administration in the NHS. As a

result, the changes will pay for themselves within two years, and go on to deliver £5

billion of savings over this Parliament.

Myth 13 Waiting times will increase.

Fact

We are not removing any guarantees which benefit patients. That’s why we’ve

retained the cancer waiting time targets. It’s why we will ensure that patient

experience is central to how we measure NHS performance. And it’s why we’ll allow

patients to choose where to be treated, which will drive improvements in quality and

waiting times. But when a quarter of patients with cancer are diagnosed only after an

emergency, it’s not enough just to focus simply on waiting times. That is why we’re

focusing on the actual results which matter as well, like survival rates from cancer.

Myth 14 These changes will lead to a postcode lottery.

Fact

Clear national standards of care will be set, so patients can be confident that –

wherever they are treated – NHS care will be of the same high standard, wherever

they live.

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Myth 15 These aims could have been achieved by putting GPs on PCT boards

Fact

This would have simply allowed an additional layer of NHS bureaucracy to continue.

We inherited 151 PCTs and 909 ‘practice-based commissioning groups’. Our changes

are simplifying this system, cutting its costs and bringing it closer to patients.

Myth 16 Doctors and nurses will be turned into accountants.

Fact

Frontline doctors and nurses will not be turned into accountants. They will bring

clinical leadership into the NHS. They will be given all the support they need to help

them take decisions in the best interests of their patients, so that they have even more

power to do what they do best: caring for patients.

Myth 17 These plans will result in the closure of hospitals.

Fact

There are no plans to close hospitals. Indeed, our plans will prevent the kind of topdown

closures Labour made without reference to local communities. And our changes

will make the NHS more efficient by cutting back on bureaucracy, ensuring that every

penny spent in the NHS is spent where it should be.

Myth 18 GPs do not want to do the job you are asking them to do.

Fact

In just 12 weeks, GPs covering over half of the country have come together in groups

to lead our modernisation. They have come forward voluntarily, more than two years

before the formal handover of responsibility takes place in April 2013. This

demonstrates the enthusiasm among frontline GPs to take advantage of the

opportunities our modernisation plans offer.

Myth 19 These changes are a revolution.

Fact

Our proposals are an evolution of plans which governments of all parties have

introduced over the past twenty years. Giving power to GPs has been around for the

last two decades, with Labour setting up ‘practice-based commissioning’ when they

realised that abolishing GP fundholding was a mistake. Foundation hospitals, and

allowing patients to choose where to be treated on the NHS, have been ideas in the

NHS for the best part of a decade.

Myth 20 This is a huge, top-down reorganisation.

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Fact

We’re moving away from top-down organisation and control. We’re removing targets

that tie up NHS staff in red tape and we’re getting politicians out of decision-making.

We’re removing whole tiers of management that sit above doctors and nurses and

instead giving them the power to decide what’s best for their patients. We’re giving

patients more choice and control over their care, rather than managers telling them

what they get. Our changes are about simplifying and modernising the NHS; not topdown

change.

Myth 21 No-one has been consulted on these plans.

Fact

We received over 6,000 responses to the consultation on our plans, and we have

modified our plans accordingly. For example, we have introduced the programme of

GP ‘pathfinder’ consortia.

Myth 22 Primary Care Trust commissioning is in ‘meltdown’

Fact

More than 50,000 people are currently employed in NHS commissioning. We are

clear that we want to reduce this number, but we are doing so in a carefully-planned

manner. We are implementing our plans through a clearly-defined transition process,

over a period of over two years. This process involves the creation of ‘clusters’ of

PCTs, which will step back from commissioning as and when GP consortia are able to

move into their place.

Myth 23 Patients with rare conditions will suffer, because GPs don’t know

enough about them

Fact

Like now, the care of people with rare conditions won’t be commissioned by GPs, but

by national experts in these conditions.

Myth 24 GPs will be made responsible for the rationing of NHS care

Fact

GPs are already responsible for taking decisions about NHS expenditure – when they

tell a patient that they do not need a medicine; when they decide to prescribe a drug;

and when they decide to refer a patient. But because they aren’t responsible for this

expenditure at the moment – only for the decision – the Primary Care Trust has to

‘second-guess’ the decisions taken by all their GPs before deciding what services

need to be offered. This means that the system is more complicated than it needs to

be. As the NHS Confederation has said, the move to ‘GP consortia’, “presents

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significant opportunities to improve quality, efficiency and value for money in the

healthcare system”.

Myth 25 No-one will be in charge

Fact

Ministers will remain fully accountable to Parliament for the way in which the NHS’s

money is spent. But local services will be shaped to meet local needs through GP

practices working together, rather than imposed by a Primary Care Trust.


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THE CASE AGAINT: UNISON'S RESPONSE




Health and Social Care Bill: Second Reading, Monday 31 January 2011


UNISON Parliamentary Briefing



The huge Health and Social Care Bill confirms the Conservative–led government’s determination to reduce the NHS to little more than a brand name to be attached to a range of competing service providers.



The plans came out of the blue, completely overturning the government’s promise of “no more top-down reorganisations”, and represent an ideological attempt to put the pursuit of profit above the interests of patients. Reform should be gradual, it should build on what is current best practice, and it should have a strong evidence base. The Bill allows for none of these. The government’s plans will be wholesale and untested – a radical departure from what has gone before. It is therefore no surprise that the Bill has attracted unprecedented criticism from all parts of the health service.



The NHS always needs to keep improving, and all the evidence shows that it is getting better with the most recent British Social Attitudes survey finding that satisfaction with the NHS hit an all-time high in 2009. David Cameron may think the NHS is “second rate” – as he let slip in an interview on 17 January – UNISON thinks it is second to none.



UNISON is the major union in the health service and social care sector. We represent more than 450,000 healthcare employees and 300,000 social care employees employed in the NHS and local government, and by private contractors, the voluntary sector and GPs. Our members are nurses, student nurses, midwives, health visitors, healthcare assistants, paramedics and ambulance staff, occupational therapists, operating department practitioners, cleaners, porters, catering staff, medical secretaries, clerical and admin staff, pharmacy technicians and scientific staff, and primary care staff.



This briefing outlines UNISON’s concerns that the whole future of our National Health Service, with a genuine public service ethos and improving levels of healthcare for patients, is now at risk with instability and full-blown competition introduced at a time of unprecedented financial pressure.



1. THE NEW NHS: AN UNFETTERED COMPETITIVE FREE-FOR-ALL



Clause 52 establishes that the first duty of Monitor, the foundation trust regulator, will in future be to “promote competition”. Later in the Bill, Clause 104 even suggests that Monitor could vary prices “in relation to different descriptions of provider” which implies that Monitor could decide to provide extra incentives to bring new private operators into a market by insisting that commissioners pay them a preferential price. Clauses 60-68 demonstrate the government’s ideological determination to force through competition for its own sake, with virtually no reference to boosting choice or to attempting to enhance the quality of service. The repeated references to the Competition Commission and the Office of Fair Trading are completely at odds with a public health service that must be treated as distinct from the likes of the privatised utilities.



Commissioners will in future have to encourage “any willing provider” to deliver services to patients, which will destabilise NHS providers and potentially create a larger role for private healthcare companies. And Clauses 15 and 60 refer directly to compliance with EU legislation, which would give the Secretary of State legislative backing to enforce EU competition law. Once services are commercialised and put out to tender it is virtually impossible under these rules for them to be taken back into a public sector health service.

The lack of accountability in the move to commissioning consortia remains deeply worrying given that these organisations will be responsible for handling up to £75-80bn of the NHS budget. The fact that the door is open for consortia to spend some of this money on “commissioning support” from organisations such as American multinational United Healthcare and management consultants KPMG is the clearest sign of NHS money bleeding out of the system.



The Bill’s impact assessment even speaks in glowing terms of Compulsory Competitive Tendering, despite the proven failure of this approach in the NHS: CCT was introduced for hospital cleaning in the 1980s. The result was that the cost of cleaning was always put before quality and infections such as MRSA shot up.



• Will a market in health providers have the same dysfunctionality of many other markets: a desire for easy profits and the avoidance of some clinical procedures where the margins are lower?



• How will the public sector ethos be maintained when the NHS is merely a brand name and it makes no difference whether health services are provided by the private or the public sector?



2. PRICE OVER QUALITY



Clause 104 unequivocally introduces price competition into the NHS as it refers to the use of “maximum prices” allowing companies to undercut prices in order to enter markets. This could happen with private companies offering “loss leaders” to gain a foothold before expanding to the detriment of NHS providers.



All the evidence from the USA and from the failed English experiment with price competition in the 1990s demonstrates that allowing providers to compete on price leads to the quality of service deteriorating.



There is a consensus across the political spectrum that price competition would damage patient care. Zack Cooper, a pro-market health economist from the London School of Economics, states that “every shred of evidence suggests that price competition in healthcare makes things worse, not better”. Carol Propper from the University of Bristol has produced research on the 1990s experience that shows that in areas where price competition was used patients were more likely to die after an admission following a heart attack. In her opinion the government is “potentially endangering patients’ lives”.



Even NHS chief executive David Nicholson, in giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, agreed that such a move was “extremely dangerous”. Moreover there is no recognition in the Bill, as there was in the Department of Health’s most recent Operating Framework (December 2010), that at the very least commissioners would want to ensure there was no detrimental impact on quality.



• What evidence is there that competition on price rather than quality will deliver benefits for patients?



• Will safeguards be introduced to stop quality of care being compromised by cost cutting?



3. PRIVATE PATIENTS PRIORITISED



Clause 150 removes the cap on both the amount of private healthcare services a foundation trust can provide and the amount of private income it can derive from this. A foundation trust paid for by public money and staffed by doctors and nurses trained through the public purse could decide that its business case was best served by increasing private sector income.



There is currently a cap on private sector income – at the level it was at when foundation trusts were established and more recently set at 1.5% for mental health foundation trusts. The purpose of the cap is to stop hospitals from pushing NHS patients to the back of the queue. In the new cut-throat system, hospitals are likely to prioritise those that bring in extra income over free NHS patients.

Reassurances about the need for foundation trusts to reinvest their private patient income in improving NHS services have been inadequate, and plans for foundation trusts to keep separate accounts listing their private income and their NHS income are so far only referred to in the Bill’s impact assessment, rather than being formally legislated for.



• In the brave new NHS, will foundation trust chief executives be tempted to prioritise those that give them extra money over free NHS patients?



• What reassurance can be given that the removal of the private income cap will not lead to hospitals pushing NHS patients to the back of the queue?



4. MASSIVE INSTABILITY



The NHS is under huge pressure to produce £20 billion of “efficiency savings”. Now is not the right time therefore to embark upon the largest structural reorganisation in NHS history that involves scrapping two entire layers of the NHS structure – primary care trusts and strategic health authorities – and putting power in the hands of untested and largely unaccountable commissioning consortia.



This is also likely to create a postcode lottery in which geographical variation will increase with a lack of local and regional oversight to ensure the consistent quality and availability of care. Safety could be compromised as well: there are major question marks as to whether the new commissioning consortia and the arm’s length NHS Commissioning Board will be able to take care of crucial issues like resisting a swine flu pandemic in the way that the NHS has been able to in its current form.



Clause 148 confirms that the borrowing limits on foundation trusts are to be removed, raising the likelihood of hospitals getting into financial difficulty. And there will no longer be a fall-back option of bankrupt hospitals returning to the NHS as Clause 158 repeals this aspect of existing legislation. Instead hospitals can be sold off to other bidders, including private companies, and only those services “designated” as essential will have to be provided elsewhere – the interpretation of which is open to question and can be challenged by providers at tribunal if they wish to rid themselves of providing a particular service.



• Are Ministers, MPs and most importantly patients ready to see hospitals fail and postcode lotteries increase?



5. LACK OF DEMOCRATIC ENGAGEMENT AND TRANSPARENCY



Clause 178 established the new Health and Wellbeing Boards, but for them to express real democratic accountability, UNISON believes that a majority of the Board should be elected councillors (rather than “at least one” as currently stated). The make-up of the Boards includes a role for directors of children’s services but not for representatives from education, which is an oversight given the idea of the Board is to join-up services across areas. The Boards also lack the input of trade union representatives, which would be a way of ensuring that the staff voice is heard. There are further question marks about the power that can be exercised by the Boards that can only “encourage” the integration of services and joint working (Clause 179) and consortia only need to have “regard to” local health and wellbeing strategies (Clause 178).



In terms of transparency, Clause 67 states that companies can “exclude from publication… commercial information” which will damage the proper scrutiny of new providers. These concerns are mirrored elsewhere in the Bill, with all appointments to key bodies being made by the Secretary of State and likely therefore to be politicised – in contrast to Andrew Lansley’s claim to be taking politics out of the NHS. There is no provision for patient, public or staff reps on key bodies such as the NHS Commissioning Board.



• Will measures to hold commissioning consortia to account be strengthened?

6. NHS STAFFING ISSUES



The Bill’s impact assessment makes clear that there will be more than 20,000 redundancies across the health service as a result of this reorganisation. This represents a personal tragedy for those affected and also a colossal waste of talent and resources at a time the NHS can ill afford it; redundancy payments alone will total £1bn.



Staff transferred to commissioning consortia will be at risk that their new employer could move to change their pay, terms and conditions unilaterally. Whilst Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations protect terms and conditions at the point of transfer, existing law provides for subsequent changes for an “economic, technical or organisational reason”. Whilst UNISON would oppose such moves, transferred staff could have the terms of their transfers unraveled after the fact, with consortia able to vary the terms of a transfer after it has taken place. The impact assessment also suggests that Monitor could be used to dilute the value of NHS pensions in an attempt to level out market “distortions” between the NHS and private companies. Such a leveling down would be entirely the wrong way to go and would be another example of the government attempting to crowbar in an artificial role for the commercial sector.



7. TRANSFER OF REGULATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS



The Bill heralds a significant change for social workers who are currently registered with the General Social Care Council (GSCC) but in future will have to register with the new Health & Care Professions Council. This means that the right of appeal will be to the High Court rather than the current Care Standards Tribunal. This is a detrimental change which is causing great disquiet among social workers because permissible grounds for appeal are much narrower and less responsive to the complexities of social work cases. Pursuing an appeal will become more expensive and risky.



UNISON is very concerned that the new system will reduce access to justice as parties have to instruct barristers or solicitors with higher rights and social workers pursuing appeals run the risk of having costs awarded against them. The current Care Standards Tribunal system has proved itself to be accessible, efficient and cost effective in ensuring fair outcomes for social workers.



UNISON is therefore calling for the current appeal arrangements to be retained. Social workers are also concerned that the change means a more than doubling of the annual registration fee. UNISON is calling for subsidy of the fees, for them to be phased in, and for a pro-rata fee rate for part-time staff. The changes only apply to social workers in England registered or eligible to register with the GSCC. This is potentially very problematic as Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales will continue to operate the old Codes of Practice and with the lower fee level. There are many questions about portability of registration when social workers move around the UK. UNISON wants to ensure that in addressing these, there are not unreasonable barriers to social workers’ mobility.



Conclusions



• The US-based Commonwealth Fund demonstrated recently that the NHS is the most equitable health system and the only one where a patient’s income does not determine the quality of care they receive.

• Spending billions on an untested, undemocratic and unnecessary reorganisation is the wrong treatment at the wrong time.

• Combined with the real budget restrictions already being implemented, patients are facing a perfect storm that threatens our NHS – an NHS that the public continues to cherish and trust.



CONTACT: if you require further information or would like to meet, please contact:

• Guy Collis, UNISON: tel: 020 7551 1503, e-mail: g.collis@unison.co.uk

• Steve Barwick, Connect: tel: 020 7222 3533, e-mail: steve@connectpa.co.uk

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