The Cresswell story shows how far the NHS and Department of Health have blindly followed the prevailing New Labour ideology that the only way to improve public services is by using market mechanisms and introducing competition.

There is no good evidence for this belief, and as David Craig and Richard Brooks show clearly in their recent book Plundering the Public Sector, civil servants have swallowed the advice of expensive management consultants, wasting billions of taxpayers’ money and then applying pressure to newly formed, inexperienced primary care trusts to make them toe the party line.

So far, Gordon Brown has not shown any signs of tackling this scandalous situation.

The Liberal Democrat and Green parties have good clear policies, and David Cameron needs to produce a definitive plan to stop this waste of public money.

The NHS is not a business, it is a service, and its staff welcome the extra finance, but not the way in which it is being wasted on setting up a market that is quite inappropriate for healthcare, as the costly and inefficient US system demonstrates clearly.

Wendy Savage,

Chair,
Keep Our NHS Public steering group,
London N1 8HN

From:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/800e7e22-5da4-11dc-8d22-0000779fd2ac.html