THE Tory-LibDem Health and Social Care Bill will cause ‘irreparable harm’ to the NHS, 400 leading doctors, consultants and public health experts have written, in a devastating open letter to members of the House of Lords.
The letter states: ‘We write as public health doctors and specialists from within the NHS, academia and elsewhere to express our concerns about the Health and Social Care Bill.
‘The Bill will do irreparable harm to the NHS, to individual patients and to society as a whole.
‘It ushers in a significantly heightened degree of commercialisation and marketisation that will lead to the harmful fragmentation of patient care; aggravate risks to individual patient safety; erode medical ethics and trust within the health system; widen health inequalities; waste much money on attempts to regulate and manage competition; and undermine the ability of the health system to respond effectively and efficiently to communicable disease outbreaks and other public health emergencies.
‘While we welcome the emphasis placed on establishing a closer working relationship between public health and local government, the proposed reforms as a whole will disrupt, fragment and weaken the country’s public health capabilities.
‘The government claims that the reforms have the backing of the health professions. They do not.
‘Neither do they have the general support of the public.
‘It is our professional judgement that the Health and Social Care Bill will erode the NHS’s ethical and cooperative foundations and that it will not deliver efficiency, quality, fairness or choice. We therefore request that you reject passage of the Health and Social Care Bill.’
Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of Council at the BMA, commented: ‘As this letter demonstrates, doctors have major concerns about the Bill.
‘Accelerating the process of marketisation poses huge risks to the NHS, threatening its ability to operate effectively and equitably.
‘Insufficient thought has been given to the long-term consequences for medical education and training, public health and the patient-doctor relationship.
‘Ideally, we’d like to see the legislation withdrawn entirely.’
