Shadow health secretary John Healey criticised the prime minister today over the government's response to its own NHS plans, reports Left Foot Forward's Shamik Das.
Shadow health secretary John Healey criticised the prime minister today over the government’s response to its own NHS plans. It follows the tabling of an Opposition motion yesterday calling on Mr Cameron to recommit the Health and Social Care Bill to a Public Bill Committee, were the “listening exercise” and public consultations to bring about major changes to the ill thought out bill.
In a speech to the Royal Society of Medicine this morning, Mr Healey said:
“David Cameron is a PR man looking for a PR answer. He must accept the problem is not the presentation of his NHS plans but the full-blown free-market ideology behind them. This Tory ideology is totally at odds with the ethos of the NHS and the essential way it works…
“The test for the prime minister now is whether he makes the changes required to honour the promises he made to protect the NHS and guarantee patients that they will see health care get better not worse, and whether he makes the changes required to safeguard the NHS and prepare it to meet the challenges of the future…
“The risk is that the prime minister decides on a political fix to deal with divisions in his government not the dangers to our NHS… Whatever the prime minister decides to do with his NHS plans, this first year has raised serious questions about his judgement, competence, values and integrity.”
Earlier, when tabling the motion, he said:
“David Cameron has promised significant and substantial changes to his NHS plans. If he’s true to his word, he must also agree to full and proper scrutiny of the amended Bill by sending it back to Committee.”
Yesterday, Left Foot Forward reported concerns the health bill’s competition clauses were “tantamount to privatisation”, following Nick Clegg’s failure at Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions on Tuesday to say he would block part III of the health bill; we also reported how Mr Lansley was failing to listen to voters’ views on the bill, with 390,000 people having signed 38 Degrees’ “Save the NHS” petition.
As 38 Degrees’ executive director David Babbs put it:
“For a Secretary of State currently presiding over a high-profile listening exercise, Andrew Lansley has yet to convince many of us that listening is really something he’s interested in.
“38 Degrees members hope these adverts – [challenging Mr Lansley to start listening properly, to be run in major newspapers] – make more people aware of how they can work together to make their voices heard, and turn up the pressure on the Secretary of State to start genuinely listening, rather than just pretending he is.”
34 Responses to “Healey: “Cameron is a PR man looking for a PR answer””
paurina
“Cameron is a PR man looking for a PR answer” – http://j.mp/jxTLqR
Ross Haynes
Healey: "Cameron is a PR man looking for a PR answer": http://bit.ly/l0uY76 reports @ShamikDas #SaveTheNHS
robert
The big problem for Labour of course after the one off massive payment to the NHS it was then allowed to return to the old ways of debts. I saw this morning a chief executive of a failing hospital of elderly say yes we have learned the lessons we will act now, but why is it that when ever anything goes wrong the people at the top say we will learn.
I was once in hospital with back injury and I fell out of bed six hours later I was seen, now you can blame the Tories but I was in during labour spell.
It is time for Labour to tell us what it intends to do about education the NHS welfare, because I believe when it comes to pull and push the NHS under labour is not safe.
Look at the NHS under Labour in Wales with massive cuts.
Labour is looking for a battle ground but the people have moved on.
UNISON Health
Healey: "Cameron is a PR man looking for a PR answer" http://fb.me/W4aCmkW6
Anon E Mouse
After the appalling reports of the state of the care elderly and venerable people get in hospitals and considering the amount of money Labour wasted on the NHS, I’d have thought that John Healey should spend less time being insulting and a bit more time apologising to the people of this country for the incompetent way his government ran healthcare in this country.
Labour need to realise that as much as they repeat their tractor statistics, it is human beings who are being let down by their shambolic management of the hospitals and John Healey should get back under whichever stone he’s crawled out from and stop trying to bury bad news.
Another shameful day for the Labour Party however you spin it…