The Tory-LibDem Health and Social Care Bill risks ‘unravelling and dismantling’ the NHS, the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) warned yesterday.
The competition running through the bill ‘will lead to fragmentation of services’ which would be ‘a backward step for maternity services’, added the Royal College of Midwives (rcm).
The Bill was debated in parliament yesterday, as part of the government’s so-called ‘pause’ in its progress.
The RCGP wrote to Prime Minister Cameron to coincide with yesterday’s debate, listing changes that it calls upon the government to make to the bill to protect the principles of the NHS.
The RCGP said that the bill should make it clear that the Secretary of State has a duty to provide – or secure provision of – a comprehensive health service throughout England.
RCGP Chair Dr Clare Gerada said: ‘We understand that the NHS needs to change, and we have said all along that the College is not opposed to health service reform.
‘The Bill is attracting a lot of opposition, but this paper sets out our comprehensive analysis of RCGP concerns, based on evidence, which we hope the government will act upon as the Bill continues to pass through parliament.
‘The RCGP will continue to promote the development of high quality, effective patient centred care, with GPs at the heart of NHS service delivery.
‘The reforms promote competition without sufficient clarification of how services to patients will be safeguarded and improved.
‘We believe that provider side reforms could deal with many of the issues without the need for repeated organisational change or by many of the proposed reforms.’
Meanwhile, Cathy Warwick, General Secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, said: ‘We are becoming increasingly uncomfortable about the direction of NHS reforms.
‘The level of competition that the reforms will bring in will lead to fragmentation of services.
‘Trusts will be competing against each other not collaborating, and collaboration not competition is the key to better care.
‘This would be a backward step for maternity services.
‘At a time when the NHS is required to find efficiency savings of £20 billion over the next four years, the last thing that the service needed was another costly and destabilising top-down reorganisation.
‘We do not need a root and branch reform of the NHS, we need a root and branch look at these reforms.
‘These reforms are too much, too soon, too fast and mothers, babies and midwives will suffer because of it.’