31st July 2015

• What the NHS would look like under Jeremy Corbyn
• Andy Burnham sets out his stall on health
• NHS England launches vanguard support package
• NICE conclusions on safe staffing halted
• Smith review recommendations published
  

What the NHS would look like under Jeremy Corbyn

As the Labour leadership race heats up and gathers increasing levels of media interest, with polls putting left-wing candidate Jeremy Corbyn ahead of former favourite Andy Burnham, here’s a look at Mr Corbyn’s views on the NHS.

Since the election, Mr Corbyn has praised Ed Miliband’s manifesto pledge of repealing the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and increasing funding for higher numbers of GPs and nurses. During the last Labour Government, Mr Corbyn was vocal in his opposition to awarding NHS contracts to private service providers, and continues to campaign for the public provision of NHS care and treatments.

As a London MP, he spoke out against the reconfiguration plans for hospitals in London to concentrate specialist services and A&E departments at fewer sites in the city in 2010, on the basis of hospital closures and job losses. Throughout his political career, Mr Corbyn has supported calls for the expansion of healthcare spending with the aim of reducing health inequalities across populations, and to end the internal market introduced in the 1980s.

Having emphasised his concern for job security for NHS staff during his time as an MP, Mr Corbyn has received leadership endorsements from the largest public sector trade union Unison, as well as Unite, the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, and the Communications Workers Union.

Mr Corbyn has famously been a long-time anti-war campaigner, and has argued for cuts in defence spending to prioritise public funding of services such as health, welfare, and education. During his leadership campaign, he has announced plans to create a National Education Service, based on the ‘cradle to grave’ principle of the NHS. He also previously openly supported the use of homeopathic medication to ‘complement’ conventional medical treatments.

Andy Burnham sets out his stall on health

In the week of Jeremy Corbyn’s unexpected surge in support, Labour leadership contender Andy Burnham made a major speech in Leeds setting out his plans for the NHS.

The former Health Secretary announced that he would launch a ‘Beveridge-style commission’ looking into how to create a National Health and Care Service to provide social care ‘on the same principle as the NHS’, including introducing a new care levy. Mr Burnham framed his speech around re-creating the radicalism of the Bevan-era Labour Party, telling the audience that the next leader should be prepared to ‘inspire people with our ideas’, and introduce substantial policy.

As Shadow Health Secretary under Ed Miliband’s leadership, Mr Burnham pursued health policy based on the repeal of the Health and Social Care Act, and the national integration of health and social care services. However, the commission will build further on past policy, and will look at the funding possibilities of health and social care reform, considering with it reforms to university fees and funding, housing provision, and deficit reduction.

NHS England launches vanguard support package

Following the NHS Five Year Forward View, NHS England has developed a support package for new care model vanguard sites created in March 2015. The 29 new local models of care vanguard sites are made up of local NHS and care consortiums piloting new ways of delivering care, to develop possible new care models to use across England.

The package covers 2015/16 and provides support around:

• Designing new care models to maximise impact and value for patients
• Evaluating the impact of changes on patients and staff
• Encouraging integration of commissioning and provision of services
• Empowering patients and communities when developing services
• Rethinking the delivery of care through new technologies
• Developing a modern and flexible workforce organised around patients
• Developing local leadership capability
• Demonstrating best practice in how vanguards engage with staff and patients

The vanguard sites have access to a £200 million transformation fund to support their work, and Simon Stevens has commented that this with the new support package will encourage the pace of change in vanguards and ‘remove barriers that stop them from delivering the best possible care to patients’.

The funding will also support the creation of a ‘Northumberland Accountable Care Organisation’ which will see local commissioners devolving many decision-making powers to local hospitals and other providers. Commentators have suggested this move may herald a change to the purchaser-provider split in healthcare.

NICE conclusions on safe staffing halted

NICE announced this week that they will not be publishing their work into safe staffing guidance, after previously aiming to publish work this month.

We reported earlier this month that despite a request from NHS England to stop the work, that NICE would push ahead on publishing their report. The Department of Health have said that the existing work undertaken by NICE will be included as part of the new NHS Improvement’s future work on safe staffing levels as supporting evidence for new guidance.

There have been calls, from the Chair of the House of Commons Health Select Committee, Dr Sarah Wollaston MP, and the President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Clifford Mann, for NICE to publish its conclusions.

Smith review recommendations published

The long-awaited NHS England review into NHS leadership and improvement functions led by Deputy Chair Ed Smith was published this week, and includes recommendations to overhaul NHS quality leadership.

The review precedes the establishment of the new body NHS Improvement, announced by the Secretary of State earlier this month, which will comprise Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority, and be headed by Mr Smith. The new organisation will partially take the responsibilities of NHS Improving Quality, which will be axed.

The review concludes that the current improvement structure in the NHS is unclear, and the current NHS leadership and management capability and capacity is ‘insufficient to meet the current and future needs of the system’.