Detached from reality (The Morning Star)
PATRICIA HEWITT’S assertion that the NHS has had one of its best years ever sounded to me like one of those defining moments when political responses become detached from reality.
While it is true that more money than ever is going into the National Health Service and that it is much better than it ever was under the Tories, there are some huge problems.
The first is New Labour’s philosophy on health. Blair, when he is in a corner during an election campaign, often barks back at critics that the NHS will remain free at the point of use. Again, this is true, but only partly. New Labour is obsessed with not being linked to the past, when the NHS was directly funded through taxation, its services were provided in-house by directly employed staff and its capital building programmes were the responsibility of central government. Even Margaret Thatcher did not feel able to destroy the NHS, but her government obsessively privatised services within the NHS. It also encouraged the private medical market, which left hospitals underfunded and allowed huge queues and waiting lists to build up.
As the first Health Secretary after the 1997 election, Frank Dobson was very clear that health inequalities had to be tackled. He put into effect the ideas of Professor Douglas Black, whose devastating report on the greater prevalence of preventable illness among the poorest was suppressed by the Tories after the 1979 election. But Dobson was shifted out of the job, to be followed by Alan Milburn, a man obsessed with private finance initiatives, under which the private sector builds a shiny new building, gets the profits from servicing the building and we, the public, pay for it over and over again for many years. Having decried the Tories for the internal market of the health service that the 1986 Health and Social Security Act brought about, the latest missives from the Department for Health deliberately force key services into the private sector and, under the disguise of emergencies to reduce waiting lists, the NHS is buying space in private hospitals. The NHS has been reduced from being the proud provider of services to the buyer of facilities that it used to be able to do for itself.
All this has a price and will cost many millions of pounds. PFI schemes that overrun are sold on to other contractors, which then treat the long-term servicing contract as an asset to be traded. In business terms, it makes a lot of sense. The public guarantees the income for up 25 years and the interest payments are huge - the system was described by one health union as like buying your house on a credit card. Many health workers have now learnt to be fearful of any announcement about deficits as they lead to hundreds of job losses all over the country. The management of the NHS by balance sheet and private finance, instead of the overwhelming priority of health care for those who need it, will bring back all the inequalities and uncertainties that the 1997 election was supposed to put behind us. Perhaps the Health Secretary could give us a real bumper year in 2006-7 by ending PFI schemes, halting the contracting culture and providing job security for the staff that provide the real services that we all need.
Reid's lacking a certain sense of history
DOES Defence Secretary John Reid have any sense of history? Apparently not, and he has no sense of irony, either. He made his lightning trip to Afghanistan this week to tell British soldiers that they face a tough fight to ensure its future. There is no doubt that this is true. However, he would do well to remember that, in the 19th century, British soldiers were ordered over the Khyber Pass to subdue Afghanistan. They were annihilated. Every other attempt to impose control on the country from outside has failed. The 2001 US invasion was as much based on the Neo Conservative obsession with gaining access to the part of Asia as it was about attacking the Taliban. Many of the thousands who died from bombing raids and occupation and those who later ended up Guantanamo Bay were just ordinary poor people.
It would appear that the US has now tired of its Afghan adventure and senses failure. Instead, the British have agreed to take over. We are about to witness the deployment of more troops in Afghanistan than have been sent to Iraq. Their mission is to destroy opium crops. But, when the alternative to growing opium is starvation, it is easy to see why they are cultivated. The solution is not military. It lies in ensuring that farmers in the poorest regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan can earn enough money to live. The British troops will be a target in what is a colonial war, just like they were in the 19th century. The only difference is that our troops are risking their lives not for the British empire but for the madness of the Project for a New American Century. Military Families Against the War will be visiting Westminster today to lobby MPs on the future policies towards Iraq. These families have been through the horror and pain of losing loved ones, just as US and Iraqi families have. There is little public support for the whole strategy behind this war and the families do not feel constrained from openly opposing the policy. Tony Blair and John Reid were both around in the 1970s. They have probably seen Born on the Fourth of July, which sees Ron Kovic oppose and expose the lies over Vietnam from his wheelchair. This was the point at which any vestige of credibility around the Vietnam adventure was blown. As the military planners in their bunkers in Washington and London look at options for Iran, they should reflect on the scene above ground and outside in the fresh air. Wars come from greed and power and every one creates a reaction. This time, in an age of rapid media information, millions can already see the stupidity of the decision to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. They also know that sending more soldiers and losing more lives will not bring peace.
