Health

It occurred to me that I don't know of any successful business leaders, who would risk an £85bn structural change to their organisations, without a guaranteed outcome.

And yet this Government is planning to push through an £85bn NHS Reform Bill, supported by vague and untested plans and an unpublished 'Risk Register'.

I lost a huge amount of confidence in this Government's tactical and strategic capabilities, over the 'School Boy' errors associated with the Tuition Fees fiasco. And I haven't seen any blinding success stories to promote any confidence in them since.

My own view is that this Government lacks skill, expertise, capability and the experience, to deliver an £85bn NHS Reform Bill, without causing costly and irreparable damage.

Looking at a more recent Government lead NHS initiative, the £7,000,000,000 "NHS National Programme for IT" project was abandoned after it hit £23,000,000,000. This is £16,000,000,000 more than originally budgeted whilst the project was left unfinished.

I suspect those within the Department for Health are still fundamentally the same group of people who will deliver Mr Cameron's £85bn NHS Reform Bill, which unfortunately fills me with horror.
Project 2000 Nurses was yet another gargantuan mistake introduced by Conservatives in the early 1990's. More 'School Boy' errors left unmedicated to erode the Nursing Profession for over 10 years.

The NHS can be reformed but not by a lazy wave of an £85bn magic wand. As Gerry Robinson demonstrated in his BBC documentary "Can Gerry Robinson Fix the NHS?", it's a long frustrating uphill struggle but not unachievable.

Our current stock of Ministers are exceptionally well qualified in Politics but appear to lack all of the basic practical skills and experience needed to design and instigate a consultative and measured 'Gerry Robinson' style approach to NHS reform.

There are about 306 Conservative MPs and around 57 Liberal Democrat MPs in the House of Commons. For this Bill to succeed, it requires a majority backing. I think its high time these 363 MPs represented the views and interests of their Constituents over and above the interests of Self and Party. To this end, I would gladly see the Bill waved through if all those who supported and believed in it, pledged their worldly possessions and swore an oath to resign from their positions, parties and public life in the event of failure. This would focus their minds on perhaps the only risks they really care about. The Bill would instantly be declared DOA.

If you are going to gamble with our capital and our assets, there needs to be an incentive to get it right first time.

The NHS doesn't need more 'Competition' and privatisation by stealth; it needs the capability to deliver consistent 'Standards' of Healthcare. Get it right and the service delivery costs become both manageable and predictable.