Today's meeting of the Shropshire NHS Trust was a bit of a shambles by all accounts - they didn't announce it properly so it wasn't a legal consultation - but the Park Inn in Telford was packed out (over 300 people) despite being held, yet again, during the working day.
Earlier this month I wrote on this blog that it is the Welsh government that needs to sort out the inadequate health provision in Mid Wales, not the NHS here in Shropshire and I stand by that. I suggested that the Welsh government should invest some of their substantial health budget in building a new hospital in Mid Wales so that the Welsh government can discharge its duty to provide adequate health care to Welsh people without unduly impinging on our health services here in Shropshire. Again, I stand by that comment.
However, it occurs to me that there is a better solution. It can be implemented in the next financial year and it will protect and possibly even improve health services in Shropshire. As the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) is an integral part of the Welsh government's health provision for Mid Wales, the Welsh government can contribute part of its health budget towards the general running costs of the hospital.
The Welsh government doesn't provide hospital services to Mid Wales, which has a population of about 209,000. Instead it uses the RSH and other English and Welsh hospitals to provide those services. The RSH is the primary hospital for the county of Powys which has a population of approximately 132,000. The population of Shropshire is only around 283,000 (as of 2001). Almost a third of the people in the catchment area for the RSH are the responsibility of the Welsh government. It is only fair, therefore, that the Welsh government should contribute more than a fee per patient treated (at a discounted rate, inexplicably) and should instead contribute a proportionate amount of the actual running costs of the RSH.
The NHS in England is no longer run as a public service, it is run as a business and the NHS in Shropshire is in effect providing an outsourced health service to the Welsh government. Any outsourcing business that didn't either charge their client a share of the capital cost of running a shared service or a usage charge at an inflated price to recover a share of the capital costs would soon be out of business and deservedly so. If the NHS in Shropshire is going to act like an outsourcing business then it needs to start thinking like one.
The second attempt at today's consultation will be taking place at the Park Inn in Telford at 1pm this coming Monday. I hope to be there to put this argument across to the representatives of the Shropshire NHS.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Friday, October 09, 2009
CEP Protest in Smethwick
Members of the Campaign for an English Parliament (CEP) in Shropshire and the West Midlands attended the inaugural meeting of the grandly-titled but pointlessly ineffectual Regional Grand Committee for the West Midlands last night (8th October) to protest at its existence.
Like the vast majority of English people, the Campaign for an English Parliament opposes the damaging regionalisation of England and instead believes that England should be run by an English Parliament.
CEP members held up a 12ft banner and waved placards as MPs arrived at Sandwell College Campus at Smethwick. Several passing motorists stopped to read the placards and many of them stuck up their thumbs and honked their horns in support.
Despite the Conservatives saying that they would boycott these regional grand committees and pledging, in their party conference this week, to unravel Labour's regionalisation, seven opposition MPs turned up to the meeting. Had they not attended, the Labour MPs that attended would have failed to meet the minimum number required for the meeting to go ahead.
These regional grand committees are Gordon Brown's preferred form of government for England and are supposed to be Labour's answer to the national parliament and assembly they created in Scotland and Wales. British ministers have described them as bringing democracy closer to the people. To think that the people of England will accept this sham as the future of their country is an insult.
Like the vast majority of English people, the Campaign for an English Parliament opposes the damaging regionalisation of England and instead believes that England should be run by an English Parliament.
CEP members held up a 12ft banner and waved placards as MPs arrived at Sandwell College Campus at Smethwick. Several passing motorists stopped to read the placards and many of them stuck up their thumbs and honked their horns in support.
Despite the Conservatives saying that they would boycott these regional grand committees and pledging, in their party conference this week, to unravel Labour's regionalisation, seven opposition MPs turned up to the meeting. Had they not attended, the Labour MPs that attended would have failed to meet the minimum number required for the meeting to go ahead.
These regional grand committees are Gordon Brown's preferred form of government for England and are supposed to be Labour's answer to the national parliament and assembly they created in Scotland and Wales. British ministers have described them as bringing democracy closer to the people. To think that the people of England will accept this sham as the future of their country is an insult.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Letters in Shropshire Star
I had a letter published in the Shropshire Star the other day:
Easy way of saving NHS cash in England
With all the talk of cutting services at the Princess Royal Hospital, it is worth bearing in mind a few things. Firstly, the English NHS has been underspending for the last few years by a considerable amount.
Spending on the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish NHS has increased considerably. Secondly, the Welsh government refuses to pay the going rate to English hospitals for treating Welsh patients - something that costs the NHS in Shropshire approximately £2m per year.
Thirdly, the Welsh are terrible payers - Oswestry hospital threatened to refuse to treate patients from Powys earlier this year because they wouldn't pay their bills. A hospital in Bristol actually went as far as cancelling surgery for Welsh patients this year for the same reason.
The Welsh get free prescriptions and free hospital car parking yet we in England still subsidise their health service thanks to the Barnett Formula.
Why do our MPs allow £20bn a year flow over the border to subsidise spending in the rest of the UK? Shropshire's hospitals could raise well over £2m a year by charging Welsh health boards the amount for treating their patients and penalising for overdue payments.
Stuart Parr
Telford
Tonight they printed a reply from another reader ...
Rules for English are unfair
I agree with Stuart Parr's letter (Shropshire Star, October 2). We English are very unfairly treated under the Barnett formula to the advantage of the other countries in the so-called United Kingdom.
Over the last few years this has become the "dis-united kingdom". He asks why our MPs allow this disparity and all I can do is point out again that our Government is heavily Scottish-dominated. The other countries in the UK all have their own assemblies, but not the English.
The Scottish-dominated government will not even stop the Scottish, Welsh and Ulster MPs from voting on English-only matters in Westminster.
All this is very unfair to the English and even Barnett has stated so, but with the majority of English MPs being Conservative our current government is not going to change anything,
We can only hope to achieve parity after the next election and have our own parliament, or better still get rid of the other money-wasting and expense claiming assemblies.
Graham Burns
Newport
Agree with every word right up until the second half of the last sentence.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Tories won't be boycotting regional grand committee after all
The Tories and the Lib Dems both pledged to boycott Gordon Brown's regional grand committees so I called the offices of the five Shropshire MPs over the last couple of days to ask if they would be attending the regional grand committee in Smethwick on Thursday.
- Daniel Kawczynski will definitely not be attending the meeting, approves of the Tory boycott and opposes regionalisation.
- Owen Paterson is giving a speech to the Tory Party conference and won't be attending the committee.
- Mark Pritchard's secretary in his constituency office doesn't have access to his diary and his Westminster office has yet to reply to an email.
- David Wright has yet to return my call (although he has been sending me Twitter messages all day).
- Philip Dunne will be attending the committee as he has been instructed to attend by the party whip.
Abolishing Labour's regional government gets the loudest clap so farHow much applause would the announcement have got if the delegates knew that the whips were ordering their shadow cabinet members to attend regional grand committees despite a public pledge to boycott them?
Down with this sort of thing
On Thursday members of Shropshire Branch will be at the Campaign for an English Parliament’s protest at the pantomime that is the regional grand committee for the West Midlands euroregion.
The regional grand committee for the east of England euroregion was a complete farce – hardly any MPs turned up to the meeting (not enough for a quorum so they couldn’t discuss anything on the agenda) and they spent 30 minutes of the 50 minute meeting debating whether to put the PA system on. The whole thing cost the taxpayer nearly £2m, the meeting in the West Midlands euroregion will also cost roughly the same amount.
This is El Gordo’s vision for the future governance of England but it’s certainly not mine. The protest will be at 6:30pm on Thursday the 8th of October at the Sandwell College campus in Smethwick.
Monday, October 05, 2009
It's not our job to fix the Welsh government's bad decisions
The NHS in Shropshire is proposing to cut A&E and acute paediatric services in Telford's Princess Royal Hospital to save money.
David Wright, the MP for the Telford constituency, has launched a "Say no to Shrewsbury" campaign calling for cuts to be made at Shrewsbury rather than Telford which has prompted Daniel Kawczynski, the MP for the Shrewsbury & Atcham constituency, to campaign for the cuts to be made at Telford instead. Daniel Kawczynski has even tried to enlist the help of Rhoddri Morgan, the First Minister of Wales, because patients from Mid Wales would be inconvenienced by cuts to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.
The suggestion that one hospital can cope with all A&E and acute paediatric referrals is ridiculous in itself but to suggest that they should be centralised in Shrewsbury when Telford has the largest and fastest growing population in the county is unbelievable.
What is best for Shropshire is for the services to stay at both hospitals or for a new hostpial to be built between Shrewsbury and Telford. But if there is a requirement to centralise services then they should be centralised in Telford, not in Shrewsbury.
The problem with this suggestion, though, is that it inconveniences patients from Mid Wales who don't have a local Welsh hospital. The NHS in Shropshire has cited this as a reason to keep services in Shrewsbury and the Daniel Kawczynski MP has also used it as an excuse to keep services at the hospital in his constituency.
And this is the problem with so-called English MPs - they aren't English MPs at all, they are British MPs. On balance, taking into account the interests of patients from Mid Wales, it makes most sense to keep services at Shrewsbury and it is the interests of those Welsh patients that Daniel Kawczynski is taking into account and using as leverage to save services at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.
But the people of Shrewsbury & Atcham elected Daniel to represent their interests, not the interests of Welsh people. In Wales they elect Welsh Assembly Members to deal with health as it's a devolved area and it is the Welsh government that has a responsibility to provide adequate health care in Wales, not the British government and not the NHS in Shropshire.
I'm not suggesting for a moment that someone from outside of Shropshire should be refused treatment at any of our Shropshire hospitals but there is a difference between treating someone from another English county, whose health provision is the responsibility of the same government that our own is in Shropshire and treating someone from another country whose health provision is the responsibility of another government - one that, crucially, is funded separately to the English NHS and given more money from the British Treasury to provide services.
This isn't a case of sour grapes or being anti-Welsh, it's simply that the provision of health services to Welsh people is the responsibility of the Welsh government and if services do need to be cut in Shropshire then those cuts should be made in such a way that it provides the least detriment to the people of Shropshire. If it leaves the Welsh with worse health provision then I'm afraid it is up to the Welsh people to petition the Welsh government to invest some of their health budget in building a hospital in Mid Wales.
The Welsh people asked for their own government and they got it. They have to live with the consequences of that decision and one of those consequences is that they can't keep relying on the English to pick up the pieces when their government makes the wrong decision. Not investing in health care in Mid Wales was a bad decision but fixing the consequences of that bad decision is up to the Welsh government, not the NHS in Shropshire.
David Wright, the MP for the Telford constituency, has launched a "Say no to Shrewsbury" campaign calling for cuts to be made at Shrewsbury rather than Telford which has prompted Daniel Kawczynski, the MP for the Shrewsbury & Atcham constituency, to campaign for the cuts to be made at Telford instead. Daniel Kawczynski has even tried to enlist the help of Rhoddri Morgan, the First Minister of Wales, because patients from Mid Wales would be inconvenienced by cuts to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.
The suggestion that one hospital can cope with all A&E and acute paediatric referrals is ridiculous in itself but to suggest that they should be centralised in Shrewsbury when Telford has the largest and fastest growing population in the county is unbelievable.
What is best for Shropshire is for the services to stay at both hospitals or for a new hostpial to be built between Shrewsbury and Telford. But if there is a requirement to centralise services then they should be centralised in Telford, not in Shrewsbury.
The problem with this suggestion, though, is that it inconveniences patients from Mid Wales who don't have a local Welsh hospital. The NHS in Shropshire has cited this as a reason to keep services in Shrewsbury and the Daniel Kawczynski MP has also used it as an excuse to keep services at the hospital in his constituency.
And this is the problem with so-called English MPs - they aren't English MPs at all, they are British MPs. On balance, taking into account the interests of patients from Mid Wales, it makes most sense to keep services at Shrewsbury and it is the interests of those Welsh patients that Daniel Kawczynski is taking into account and using as leverage to save services at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.
But the people of Shrewsbury & Atcham elected Daniel to represent their interests, not the interests of Welsh people. In Wales they elect Welsh Assembly Members to deal with health as it's a devolved area and it is the Welsh government that has a responsibility to provide adequate health care in Wales, not the British government and not the NHS in Shropshire.
I'm not suggesting for a moment that someone from outside of Shropshire should be refused treatment at any of our Shropshire hospitals but there is a difference between treating someone from another English county, whose health provision is the responsibility of the same government that our own is in Shropshire and treating someone from another country whose health provision is the responsibility of another government - one that, crucially, is funded separately to the English NHS and given more money from the British Treasury to provide services.
This isn't a case of sour grapes or being anti-Welsh, it's simply that the provision of health services to Welsh people is the responsibility of the Welsh government and if services do need to be cut in Shropshire then those cuts should be made in such a way that it provides the least detriment to the people of Shropshire. If it leaves the Welsh with worse health provision then I'm afraid it is up to the Welsh people to petition the Welsh government to invest some of their health budget in building a hospital in Mid Wales.
The Welsh people asked for their own government and they got it. They have to live with the consequences of that decision and one of those consequences is that they can't keep relying on the English to pick up the pieces when their government makes the wrong decision. Not investing in health care in Mid Wales was a bad decision but fixing the consequences of that bad decision is up to the Welsh government, not the NHS in Shropshire.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Telford & Wrekin to fly English flag from all council offices
Telford & Wrekin Council voted last night to fly the Cross of St George outside all of their offices.
This is a very welcome move and leads the way for other, less patriotic local authorities in England.
The British establishment doesn't allow us to have many symbols of our nation because it undermines the Britification project. Our national flag is the most important symbol of our nation and the English people and Telford & Wrekin Council is to be congratulated on this move.
This is a very welcome move and leads the way for other, less patriotic local authorities in England.
The British establishment doesn't allow us to have many symbols of our nation because it undermines the Britification project. Our national flag is the most important symbol of our nation and the English people and Telford & Wrekin Council is to be congratulated on this move.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
