Dangerous and Deceitful

One common way of making a political point is to misrepresent an opponent's point and use that straw man to discredit that person. It's annoying, and no more so than when someone you respect does it.

On UNISON's website, our General Secretary Dave Prentis does exactly that. On the news that five trusts have been given foundation status, there's the following.

"UNISON reacted angrily to the government’s decision to grant foundation status to five more hospitals today.

"The government bulldozed foundation hospitals through Parliament by the skin of its teeth, promising MPs a full review before any more hospitals would be granted foundation status,” said general secretary Dave Prentis.

Pointing out the review has not been completed, he called today's announcement “dangerous, deceitful and downright premature”.

“I am convinced that foundation hospitals will create a two-tier health service," he added."

Time to go back and look at this logically.

March 2003 - Even before Foundation Trusts had been approved by Parliament, the Government had invited all 32 trusts who had 3 stars to apply for Foundation status. The timescale then evisaged the successful applicants would start on 1 April 2004

14 May 2003 - 3 of the 32 dropped out but 29 carried on, later they were split into 2 groups, half starting on 1 April 2004, the rest in 1 June 2004.

30 July 2003 - 4 of the 29 first wave trusts lost their three stars and dropped out of the applicants, but the government announced that the other 38 with three stars could join them, that's when East Somerset, Taunton & Somerset, West Dorset, the local trusts could become applicants.

19 November 2003, the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill was making it's way through Parliament. There was a strong opposition to the idea of foundation hospitals and so it looked like the bill might not pass. John Reid, Secretary of State for Health made a number of concessions, one of which was to promise a 12 month review of the effect of foundation trusts on the NHS and to hold off on future applications until the review had reported to Parliament.

That's what Dave Prentis is refering to. But both the first wave and the second group were already in the application stage so Dr.Reid could not have meant that the batch that has just been approved would be stopped from applying. Indeed, Dr.Reid did make it very clear to Parliament in the debate.

Hansard Session 2002-03 Column 827
Joan Humble (Lab, Blackpool North & Fleetwood): I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. Will he clarify the important statement he made a moment ago about reviewing the first waves of foundation hospitals before making progress? He used the plural "waves", so can he clarify how many hospitals will be involved and whether he will come back to the House with a report before making an announcement about more foundation hospitals in the future?

John Reid: It is anticipated that the first waves will start in 2004 and will consist of two parts. One has already been publicly announced and includes 29 hospitals, falling to 25. The second part will include 30 hospitals or fewer, so the round figure is about 50. As for reporting to the House, I have always made it plain that we will review the situation as we go along, because it is the study of modern society that has led us to the conclusions we have reached about the need to give patients better information, quality, power and choice and, therefore, the need to decentralise. It would therefore be wholly contrary to our approach and intuition to say that we shall plough ahead irrespective of any obstacles or difficulties we encounter. We are prepared to review as we go along.

My hon. Friend is right, however. As I said, there is a period of approximately 12 months between autumn 2004 and autumn 2005 in which it would appropriate to carry out a specific review of what is happening. I shall ask CHAI to assist in that review. The commission, which is established under the Bill, is responsible and accountable not to me but to Parliament, so any report it produces will be presented to Parliament. I hope that that answers my hon. Friend's point.

In my opinion Dave Prentis is far too intelligent to attack Labour party policy without knowing what he's talking about, so if anyone's being deceitful, it's him.