‘we will not stand by and see you decimate hospitals for purely financial reasons. We will not stand by and let you damage patient care,’ Dr Jonathan Fielden, Chairman of the BMA’s Consultants Committee, will warn incoming Prime Minister, Gordon Brown today.
Fielden will tell the annual consultants’ conference at Dean’s Yard, Westminster this morning, that Brown will ignore the profession at his peril.
He will say: ‘The profession is angry; it is angry with managers, with employers, but most of all we are all angry with the government, for a woeful dereliction of duty towards patients, towards the profession and towards the future.
‘The profession is angry because of this government’s mis-handling of the health service and has lost all confidence that the government can solve the problems it has created.
‘Political meddling has brought the NHS to its knees.
‘Unshackle the profession, give us back the health service and we will rebuild it.
‘Fail to do so and you will rightly have a long lasting legacy to be condemned for destroying the best piece of social capital the country has ever had.’
Fielden is to say: ‘Policy so far is rightly criticised for lacking strategic direction, pouring out initiative after initiative, taking good principles and tying them up with bureaucracy and political necessity, killing off the benefit and leaving a distorted skeleton behind.’
The creation of an internal market has ‘redirected billions of pounds away from improving efficiencies into poor value for money schemes,’
He is to add: ‘The excessive use of private firms to provide NHS services has been costly, disruptive and has fragmented care’, and ‘the current cuts in services have been excessive.
‘It is clear from the £500 million excess now available, that the Department of Health, under treasury zeal, has cut too far, been too aggressive. It takes weeks to cut; it takes years to rebuild trust.’
Fielden is to warn Brown that the cuts must stop and that the BMA will not accept NHS privatisation.
‘We will not stand by and see you decimate hospitals for purely financial reasons. We will not stand by and let you damage patient care through rushed reforms and we will not stand by and see the Trojan Horse of the independent sector rolled in to take over the health service from within.
‘It is not better, it is not better value and above all it is not safer.
‘Morale is at an all time low, the vital element, the glue, the substance that has kept the health service going, has been thrown away by political meddling.
‘Morale must be rebuilt and the key to this is politicians listening, valuing and giving back leadership to the professions.’