Milburn attacks NHS ‘car crash’

Alan Milburn said the coalition’s agenda was now “more protectionist” than Labour’s

The coalition’s amended plans for the NHS in England are the “biggest car crash” in the service’s history, a former health secretary has said.

Ex-MP Alan Milburn, David Cameron’s social mobility adviser, said taxpayers faced writing “a very large cheque” as efficiency savings were unachievable.

“Short-term politics” had been placed above “long-term policy”, Mr Milburn wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

Changes to the NHS plans followed rows between the Lib Dems and Conservatives.

The prime minister has agreed to make major concessions on his plans for the NHS in England, including more controls on competition and a slower pace of change, after criticism from Lib Dem MPs and unions.

Mr Milburn, who as health secretary under Tony Blair came into conflict with then Chancellor Gordon Brown over the running of health services, wrote in the Telegraph: “The government’s health reforms are the biggest car crash in NHS history.

“The temptation to elevate short-term politics above long-term policy proved too much for both David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

“Many in both camps inside the coalition consider the U-turn a triumph. But it has the makings of a policy disaster for the NHS and, maybe in time, a political disaster for the government.

“It leaves both health policy and British politics in a very different place.”

He added: “The promise of the coalition was that it would go where New Labour feared to tread when it came to public service reform. There would be no no-go areas.

“In fact David Cameron’s retreat has taken his party to a far less reformist and more protectionist position than that adopted by Tony Blair and even that of his predecessor Gordon Brown.”

Mr Milburn described the new policy as the “biggest nationalisation since Nye Bevan created the NHS in 1948”.

Mr Cameron had handed over control to “the daddy of all quangos”, the NHS Commissioning Board.

Mr Milburn said scrapping the 2013 deadline for giving GP consortia control of commissioning would result in a “patchwork of decision-making for years to come”.

On the need to make £20bn in efficiency savings, he asked: “So how will the NHS books be balanced?

“By the usual device which policy-makers have deployed every decade or so in the NHS. A very large cheque.

“It was precisely the situation David Cameron and George Osborne were trying to avoid. Sorry George, but the cash you were saving in your pre-election Budget for tax cuts will now have to be spent on a bail-out for the health service.”

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