Killer quango NICE- The National Institute for Curbing Expenditure has launched a new online money saving tool – NICE Pathways – that pulls together connected National Health Service guidance into one easy-to-use resource.
For the first time, doctors and commissioners will be able to view and navigate all of NICE’s separate sets of recommendations that relate to a single care pathway in a user-friendly electronic flow chart, as part of a bid to improve the use of its evidence across the nation.

The postnatal care pathway, for example, covers everything from the baby’s first 24 hours up until the first two – eight weeks after birth, providing an immediately accessible overview of all recommended care, as well as links to other products such as the Institute’s Quality Standards and implementation tools.

Launching the new tool at NICE’s 11th annual conference in Birmingham, Gillian Leng, the Institute’s deputy chief executive, said that 18 care pathways have already been completed and that the target is to have 60 on the site by the end of the year.

“NICE Pathways will provide a useful starting point for users new to a topic, while giving specialists confidence that they are up to date with everything NICE has recommended,” she said.

The move comes under a wider plan to improve the digital format of its guidance, which, in future, is likely to remain a crucial element of the new system of value-based pricing for new medicines planned by the government for 2014.

While NICE’s exact role going forward is yet to be defined, in his address to the conference health minister Earl Howe stressed that the Institute – which is to be re-established under primary legislation – will continue to provide independent advice to clinicians, and be a source of advice on cost effectiveness.

From: http://www.pharmatimes.com/NICE_unveils_new_digital_guidance_tool_at_annual_conference

Health Direct notes the use of the phrase “a source of advice on cost effectiveness” as it evokes the memory of labour’s spin- the type of phraseology that labour used to use for cost cutting.

The last Labour government left taxpayers with a £60 billion PFI bill for the scores of new hospitals it built during its 13 years in power, new figures reveal.
They shine a fresh light on the profligacy of the party’s use of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes.

Labour ministers only paid £5 billion of the £65 billion “spent” on building more than 100 hospitals between 1997 and 2010.

The rest of the money, some £60 billion, must still be repaid by the taxpayer – with some of the gigantic debt lasting for more than 30 years.

The highest profile case concerns Barts and the London NHS Trust project, signed by ministers 2006, which provided two new hospitals in the capital.

By the time the coalition took office four years later nothing at all had been repaid – leaving an outstanding bill of £5.3 billion.

Jesse Norman, the Conservative MP, accused Labour of “extraordinary hypocrisy”. Their PFI bill for hospitals will cost every working family in Britain £3,600, according to Mr Norman’s figures.

PFI schemes were started by the last Conservative government under John Major in the early 1990s. However, they mushroomed under Labour with Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, using them as a way of meeting his own public borrowing rules.

Under the schemes, instead of the government raising money upfront, a private company is given a lengthy contract to build a school or hospital and then provides related ‘services’ to the public sector.

The Government leases the building for the length of the contract before it goes back into public ownership.

Any change, however small, to the building or service provided can be charged at sky high rates, allowing the company to make a huge profit.

New analysis of official figures shows that Labour initiated PFI contracts to build 103 new hospitals between 1997 and 2010. The party proclaimed at the time of the last election it has been responsible for a “new generation” of hospitals in Britain.

The total “unitary charge” payments for these hospitals was £5.1 billion. However, many projects will not be fully paid off for more than two decades – with the last one not “completing” until 2048.

The total accumulated “unitary charge” payments for the hospitals will be £65.1 billion – meaning that only 7.8 of the total was actually paid for before Labour left office.

Costs have escalated because of rising fees and additional charges for maintenance, cleaning and catering.

According to official figures, the NHS currently pays back £1.25 billion each year – but this figure will increase until 2030 when it is expected to hit £2.3 billion.

The Barts and the London NHS Trust project, to develop Barts into a “centre of excellence” for cancer and cardiac treatment and to build a new hospital at The Royal London , was started in 2006 – but payments will not even commence until 2013-14 and will not be finished until 2048.

By that time, it will have cost £5.3 billion despite only having a “capital value” of £1 billion, according to the Treasury.

Poorly negotiated PFI contracts have already led to examples of waste including Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich having to have 64 visits a year from pest controllers even if there are no pests to control. When there are pests, the trust must pay for further visits.

In another example, officials at the Central Middlesex Hospital in north west London said that, on average, contractors charged it £210 to install an electric socket.

Senior Labour figures including Gordon Brown strongly defended using PFI schemes while in power but, more recently, leading shadow ministers have admitted errors.

John Healey, the shadow health secretary, said earlier this month: “There is definitely a case for saying we were poor at PFI, poor at negotiating PFI contracts from the outset.”

Andy Burnham, a former health secretary who is now shadow education secretary, said last year: “We made mistakes. I’m not defending every pen stroke of the PFI contracts we signed.”

Mr Norman, a member of the Treasury select committee, said: “This shows extraordinary hypocrisy. The last Government claimed to be investing in public services.”

“In fact their true investment was less than less than one tenth of what they claimed. Labour didn’t manage to pay for even one new PFI hospital on their watch.”

“Labour maxed out the nation’s credit card with a £60 billion bill for new hospitals, loading future generations with staggering debt repayments.”

“After bringing the country to the brink of bankruptcy, they now have no credible plan to clear up the mess they left us with.”

“Their approach – to spend less without making any reforms at all – would leave the NHS in crisis.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Labour-left-taxpayer-60billion-bill-for-new-hospitals

A new NHS computer system that will share the medical history of millions of patients with drug companies without proper consent is under attack from privacy experts, who say it is misleading, risky and potentially illegal.
The system, the Secondary Uses Service (SUS), is part of the NHS’s troubled National Programme for IT (NPfIT), and massively expands the amount of medical data that commercial and academic researchers can access.

In many cases, patients will not be asked for consent for their data to be shared, because it is claimed it will be “anonymised”, a process which deletes certain information with the aim of making individuals unidentifiable.

However, in a letter to the British Medical Journal, Dr Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute said that NHS rules mean such unwitting participants in research can be “trivially” re-identified. They are also not to be told or given a choice about how their medical records will be used, he said, and misled about the risks to their privacy.

“This is something that is just getting going,” Dr Brown told The Telegraph.

The SUS replaces previous record sharing arrangements that were typically on much smaller scale and involved patient consent.

It will supply data where patients’ names and addresses have been replaced by their date of birth and postcode.

“As a postcode typically contains about 20 houses, almost all patients are easily identifiable by reference to these facts,” Dr Brown said in the letter, which is co-signed by Lindsey Brown, a researcher in public health ethics at Bristol University, and Professor Douwe Korff, a data protection law specialist at London Metropolitan University.

Some of the “anonymised” data also includes the unique NHS Number for each patient, making them even more easily identifiable. According to Dr Brown and his colleagues, such weak privacy policies could be illegal under European data protection laws.

“Patients are not currently being adequately informed about possible secondary uses of their medical data for medical research,” said Dr Brown and his colleagues.

“[Patients] are not asked to give clear, specific, free and informed consent; are not offered unambiguous and effective opt-outs; and are misled about the level of anonymisation of their data and the likelihood of re-identification,” they added.

The Department of Health had not responded to a request for comment.

The letter is a response to suggestions by scientists that the rules on accessing to patient data should be further relaxed. They have welcomed SUS and argued that easier access to sensitive data records will spur medical advances.

“It is irresponsible to insist that no regulation and governance should interfere with researchers’ access to health records or record linkage capabilities,” said Dr Brown and colleagues.

The National Programme for IT was conceived under the Labour government at a cost of around £12.7bn, making it the most expensive pulic technology programme in the world.

Since coming to power, the coalition has announced it will abandon the name and shave an £700m from the price tag, in addition to the £600m cut made by Alistair Darling in 2009.

Several suppliers have dropped out and doctors’ groups have questioned the clinical value of the scheme, which will digitise patient records and make them available throughout the NHS.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-misleads-patients-over-sharing-medical-records-with-drug-firms

Labour’s Private Finance Initiative- NHS hospitals will cost taxpayers 60 years of pain.
Under Private Finance Initiative schemes, British taxpayers are committed to pay £229 billion for new hospitals, schools and other projects with a capital value of just £56 billion.

Official figures show that, under Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes, British taxpayers are committed to pay £229 billion for new hospitals, schools and other projects with a capital value of just £56 billion.

Several contracts are due to run for 60 years, documents released under freedom of information requests show, meaning taxpayers will be paying for the projects for generations to come.

Private contractors who agreed PFI deals with the Government are set to make billions of pounds in profit, with some due to see returns of up to 71 per cent.

In a series of reports, UK media lines disclose the heavy costs and administrative burdens caused by PFIs. The deals are a way of building large public projects using private finance, which were relied upon by the Labour government. The disclosures will lend weight to MPs calling on PFI companies to refund a share of their profits to the taxpayer.

The PFI deals include:
• A hospital which charged £52,000 for a job that cost £750. Demolishing a shelter for smokers resulted in the PFI contractor charging £2,600 a year for the additional work .
• A hospital in Bromley, south London, which will cost the NHS £1.2billion, more than 10 times what it is worth.
• An empty school which will cost taxpayers £370,000 a year until 2027. Another school had to pay £302 for a socket, five times the cost of the equipment it wanted to plug in.
• Military dog kennels which would have ended up costing more per night than a room in the Park Lane Hilton, London. The deal to replace facilities at the Defence Animal Centre in Melton Mowbray resulted in the sacking of the contractor and the scrapping of the contract.
Under a PFI, a private contractor builds a school, hospital or other asset, then owns it for typically between 25 and 35 years, effectively renting it to the taxpayer for that time. In exchange, the contractor has responsibility for maintenance.

Treasury papers suggest that payments on PFI contracts already signed run until 2048. The Daily Telegraph (a UK daily broadsheet) has uncovered deals, signed in the late 1990s, which include special clauses meaning that they last for up to six decades.

So a 21 year-old leaving university this year will pay taxes for the PFI until they are almost 70.

By then, some of the facilities will have been obsolete for years. Political pressure on the PFIs, introduced by John Major but greatly expanded when Gordon Brown was chancellor, was mounting last night after The Telegraph established the scale of profit-making by some of those involved.

An almost unknown City company, Innisfree, with only 14 staff, is the largest single player in the PFI market, owning or co-owning 269 PFI schools and 28 hospitals.

According to accounts filed at Companies House, Innisfree’s profit margin was 53 per cent last year. A successful FTSE 100 company makes margins of around 6 per cent. David Metter, the founder and chief executive of Innisfree, owns almost three-quarters of the company and collected pay and dividends of £8.6 million last year.

Jesse Norman, the Conservative MP for Hereford has been quoted as saying that Innisfree have made money like it is going out of style, and that a tiny number of individuals have made more money for less work than any other group of people he can think of. Innisfree said its directors were at a conference abroad yesterday and unable to comment, although there is no suggestion that Innisfree has done anything improper or illegal.

Mr Norman heads a new cross-party group of MPs demanding that Innisfree and other PFI beneficiaries return a portion of their profits to the taxpayer, saying that it’s scandal.

Labour’s last health secretary, Andy Burnham, who was in charge of 221 PFI projects, admitted last year that mistakes were made. Innisfree co-owns the Princess Royal University Hospital in Bromley, opened in 2003, which cost an estimated £118million to build and equip according to Treasury figures.

However, Treasury calculations indicate the NHS will have paid Innisfree and its PFI partners a total of £1,210 million for the hospital over the 35-year life of the contract, but this does include support services. The National Audit Office says the deal will produce a return for the PFI contractors of around 70 per cent.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Private-Finance-Initiative-hospitals-will-bring-taxpayers-60-years-of-pain

NHS trusts are closing accident and emergency departments to help pay for hospitals built under Labour’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) an investigation by The Daily Telegraph has found.
Since 2007, more than a fifth of England’s hospital trusts with active PFI hospitals have closed casualty departments, or published proposals to do so. In the same period, only four per cent of trusts without PFI hospitals have closed, or proposed to close, A&E units.

Fewer than a quarter of England’s 168 NHS hospital trusts have significant PFI hospitals in operation. But these trusts account for almost two-thirds of A&E closures or proposed closures.

Health campaigners said there was a “clear connection” between the “inflated” costs of the PFI and the cuts in A&E.

Most trusts insisted there was no connection — not all A&E closures are necessarily done on financial grounds and some are supported by local clinicians.

In recent days, The Daily Telegraph has disclosed how some PFI hospitals – built and operated by the private sector, and effectively rented back to the taxpayer – will end up costing the public purse more than 10 times their capital value.

The new Princess Royal University Hospital in Bromley, south London, cost £118million to build. It will end up costing taxpayers £1.2billion, including facilities management. South London Healthcare, the NHS trust responsible for the Princess Royal, has a second PFI hospital, the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich.

The trust’s annual deficit was raised to £100million by the two deals. It has closed the A&E unit at one of its non-PFI hospitals, Queen Mary’s in Sidcup.

In internal documents seen by The Daily Telegraph, the trust stated that the “occupation costs” of the PFI hospitals were roughly double those of its non-PFI hospital.

A spokesman admitted that its PFI contracts placed “some undeniable restrictions on our flexibility”. But she insisted that the decision to close A&E at Sidcup was “entirely unrelated” to PFI.

Other trusts closing A&E units include Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, which recently opened a new PFI hospital and plans to shut the full A&E unit at its non-PFI hospital in Rugby.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge Trust, which opened a new PFI hospital in Romford, wants to close the A&E unit King George’s Hospital in Ilford.

East Lancashire Trust has closed A&E at its Burnley hospital to help pay for a new PFI hospital at Blackburn. In Nottinghamshire, Sherwood Forest NHS Trust has downgraded A&E services at Newark after opening a new PFI hospital in Mansfield. At least four other trusts with PFI hospitals have similar plans.

Under its PFI contract, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich, must have 64 visits a year from pest controllers, even when there are no pests to control. When there are pests, the hospital must pay for further visits, which it did 10 times last year.

Food served at the Queen Alexandra PFI hospital in Portsmouth is cooked in south Wales, then driven 100 miles to Hampshire.

Early PFI hospitals had on average 20 per cent fewer beds than the hospitals they replaced, according to research. Because of high service charges, several PFI hospitals cannot afford to keep even these reduced numbers of beds fully open.

In an effort to disguise their private ownership, a number of PFI hospitals have changed their names to include a royal connection. Greenwich District Hospital became Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Salford Hope Hospital is now Salford Royal. Oldchurch Hospital, Romford, became Queen’s Hospital. Farnborough Hospital, in Bromley, was renamed after Princess Anne.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Casualty-units-shut-to-pay-for-private-finance-hospital-contracts

A public inquiry began yesterday into failings at an NHS hospital criticised for routinely neglecting patients and providing appalling standards of care.The inquiry, announced by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley in June, aims to build on the work of an earlier independent investigation into the care provided by Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust between 2005 and 2009.

The latest inquiry, being held at the offices of Stafford Borough Council, began with an opening statement by its chairman, Robert Francis QC.

Mr Francis, who begins hearing expert evidence next week, also chaired the previous independent inquiry into failings at Stafford Hospital.

That inquiry, which published its findings last February, identified systemic failings at the hospital, where managers were preoccupied with cost cutting and labour Government targets.

Launched after a Healthcare Commission report published last year, the previous inquiry revealed a catalogue of failings at the trust, which also runs Cannock Chase Hospital.

Appalling standards put patients at risk and between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected in a three-year period from 2005 to 2008.

The previous Labour government rejected calls for a full public inquiry into events at the hospital, instead ordering the independent inquiry.

Mr Lansley said in June that the new inquiry would be held in public in order to combat ”a culture of secrecy” and restore public confidence.

When he announced the latest inquiry, Mr Lansley told Parliament: ”We know only too well what happened at Mid Staffordshire, in all its harrowing detail, and the failings of the trust itself.

”But, we are still little closer to understanding how it was allowed to happen by the wider system.

”When this inquiry has completed its work and I return to this House to present its report, I am confident that we will, for the first time in this tragic saga, be able to discuss conclusions, rather than questions.”

In a statement issued last month, Mr Francis said he was committed to carrying out an independent, evidence-based and transparent process, to identify the broader lessons to be drawn for the wider health system.

Mr Francis said: ”I believe this is an important opportunity to contribute to the improvement of standards in the NHS and the protection of the public, building on the lessons from Mid Staffordshire.

”My aim is that, through an open, candid and reflective consideration of the events at Mid Staffordshire, the inquiry will be able to make recommendations which will assist to shape the regulatory, supervisory and commissioning structures of the NHS of the future.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Mid-Staffordshire-hospitals-inquiry-to-hear-of-failings-at-Trust

Nearly 100 bereaved relatives and victims of the Stafford NHS scandal are to be paid a total of more than £1 million following Britain’s largest ever group claim against a single hospital.
In total, 97 families of patients who died and victims who survived “appalling” standards of patient care will receive compensation payments, of up to £27,500.

Lawyers for the victims said the failings of Stafford Hospital left patients degraded and humiliated, and amounted to human rights’ abuses.

The trust has offered a total compensation settlements of £1.1 million, which the families are expected to accept, and apologies in each case. It did not accept the failings were breaches of human rights.

A public inquiry into the worst hospital scandal in more than a decade opens next week.

Last year, inspectors found that hundreds more patients died than would have been expected at the hospital between 2005 and 2008, amid “appalling” conditions.

Dehydrated patients were forced to drink out of flower vases, while decisions about treatment for Accident and Emergency patients were left to receptionists.

Up to 1,200 patients may have died needlessly over the period, as managers attempted to cut costs and hit targets.

The settlements for the group of 97 cases, including 84 deaths, covers failings as recent as this year, and dating back to 2002.

Among those to receive a payment is Heather Wilhelms, 55, who lost her mother, father, and husband at the hospital in the space of 18 months.

Her mother’s ovarian cancer was missed, while her father was sent home without treatment days before he died, after blood poisoning went undetected.

Nine months later, her husband died from lung disease in wards which his widow described as “filthy”. She told how her loved ones went to hospital for treatment and one by one, came out in their coffins.

The compensation payouts range from £1,000 to £27,500, with an average payment of just over £11,000 for bereaved relatives and those who survived failings in care.

Emma Jones, from lawyers Leigh Day & Co, which represented the families, said the action was believed to be unprecedented, with the 97 cases representing the largest group to be offered payouts by one hospital.

She said lawyers argued that the hospital’s failings were so basic and substantial, that they amounted to breaches of patients’ fundamental human rights.

Miss Jones said: “This was about basic neglect; food and drink placed out of reach, buzzers unanswered, people left after soiling themselves.

“In some cases we argued that the poor treatment caused the deaths – in many, the argument was that basic fundamental human rights were being denied – that people were being degraded, neglected and humiliated.”

Often, when elderly people die following failings in hospital, compensation is low, especially if no spouse is bereaved.

The lawyers said the case was significant because the arguments had centred on how badly patients had been treated, rather than proving their deaths had been hastened.

“For the relatives it was never about the money but more a recognition that their mum, or dad should never have been left to suffer in that way,” said Miss Jones.

She added: “We don’t know of any bigger group claim against any one hospital, we think this is unprecedented.”

The Labour Government refused to hold a public inquiry to find out what went wrong, and to prevent a repeat of the scandal.

Since taking power, the Coalition Government has ordered such an investigation – one of the key demands of The Sunday Telegraph’s Heal Our Hospitals campaign – which is due to start taking evidence next week.

On Saturday an inspection report revealed that the hospital is still failing to meet most basic standards of patient care.

The Care Quality Commission said it had concerns about the care and welfare of patients, and respect shown to them, its safeguarding of patients from abuse, the management of medicines, the safety of premises and equipment, staffing and complaints.

Inspectors said the trust had made progress, and that some of the concerns involved changes which would take time to “bed in”.

Last week it emerged that the trust had paid a locum Accident & Emergency doctor more than £5,000 to work a single 24-hour shift, in response to a sudden staffing crisis.

Julie Bailey, who founded local campaign group Cure the NHS as a response to the standard of care given by the hospital to her own mother, who died in 2007, said: “The size of the group exposes the scale of this crisis; it is an absolute disgrace that in the 21st century, the most vulnerable people were treated so appallingly.”

She added: “For relatives who have gone through this, no amount of money can ever compensate for what happened to their loved ones.”

Mrs Bailey said there were many more relatives and victims who had never received a penny. “Every day, someone comes to me who has never even spoken before about what they went through.

“There are so many people suffering as a result of this scandal, and no one has been held to account for what we are going through.”

Antony Sumara, Chief Executive of Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, said: “As always, I offer our sincerest apologies to the families concerned, for the distress caused by the poor care their relatives received at our Trust in the past.

“We have made a lot of progress over the last year in improving the care for our patients and will continue to focus our efforts on building on these improvements and making sure that they are sustained.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Almost-100-victims-of-Staffordshire-scandal-receive-payouts-after-unprecedented-group-claim

Tens of thousands of hospital patients were forced to be in mixed sex wards last year despite Labour promises that men and women would be separated, new figures suggest.
The announcement came as the new coalition government revealed that men and women will no longer have to share facilities in English hospitals.

More than eight thousand breaches of Labour’s pledge to “virtually eliminate” mixed wards were reported in just half of England’s Strategic Health Authorities in the first quarter of this year, new figures show.

If the same level existed across the rest of the country it would mean there were more than 16,000 breaches in three months, equating to 64,000 cases a year.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, announced yesterday that the “indignity” of men and women sharing accommodation would be abolished, almost 15 years after Tony Blair made the same promise.

But men and women may still have to share wards, provided the hospital ensures that male and female patients sleep in separate areas and have their own washing facilities.

Labour committed in two manifestos to provide separate accommodation for men and women, except where it was in the interests of the patient not to do so.

They later decided to divide wards into same-sex “bays”, meaning same-sex accommodation could include men and women sleeping in separate partitions of the same ward.

But the new figures reveal that one in ten patients is still admitted to a mixed ward, while a third have to share bathrooms with members of the opposite sex.

The information suggests data is not being recorded consistently across the country and NHS organisations are continuing to place patients in mixed sex accommodation for “operational reasons”, the government claimed.

Under new steps announced by Mr Lansley, NHS organisations can be held accountable for failing to guarantee same-sex accommodation where there is no clinical justification.

From next January, any breaches of the guarantee will be reported regularly and commissioners will sanction NHS bodies which admit failing to meet the pledge.

For the first time the reports will be made publicly available, meaning patients receiving elective treatment can choose to avoid the worst-performing hospitals.

Mr Lansley told BBC Radio 4′s PM programme: “It should be more than an expectation, it should be a requirement that patients who are admitted should be admitted to single-sex accommodation.

“Patients should be in single-sex accommodation, meaning that all of their period that they are admitted they should be in a bed or a bay which only consists of people of the same sex.

“And they should be able to come and go, for example to all their washing and toilet facilities, without having to pass through a part of the ward or another ward where there might be people of a different sex… so to that extent they would have the kind of privacy and dignity people have a right to expect.”

He added: “Patients should not suffer the indignity of being cared for in mixed sex accommodation. I am determined to put an end to this practice, where it is not clinically justified.

“In the future, NHS organisations will have clear standards, spelling out when they should report a breach. Where NHS organisations fail to meet this standard, we will let the public know they have failed and we will strengthen the fines which may apply.”

Chief Nursing Officer Christine Beasley added: “Protecting the privacy and dignity of patients by eliminating mixed sex accommodation must be a priority for the NHS.

“Driving this change will be the publishing of statistics on mixed sex accommodation breaches by NHS trusts. This measure will allow patients to make better informed decisions about their care.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Thousands-of-patients-still-forced-to-stay-in-mixed-sex-wards

The NHS in England faces a total bill of £65bn for new hospitals built under the private finance initiative (PFI)- six times more than the buildings cost.
Figures obtained by the BBC show that some NHS trusts are spending more than 10 percent of their turnover on the annual ”mortgage” repayments.

Under PFI, private companies win contracts to build and maintain new hospitals and mental health units and the NHS pays off the ”mortgage” over around 30 years.

The 103 schemes were valued at a total of £11.3bn when they were built.

But when rising fees and additional costs such as maintenance, cleaning and catering are taken into account, the NHS will have to pay back £65.1bn over the lifetime of the schemes. Some contracts are reportedly so restrictive that trusts are forced to pay hundreds of pounds just to get half a dozen pictures put up.

According to the data, the NHS currently pays back a total of £1.25bn each year but this figure is expected to increase until 2030 when it will hit £2.3bn, the BBC reported.

The final payment will not be made until 2048.

Professor John Appleby, chief economist at the King’s Fund health think-tank, said: ”It is a bit like taking out a pretty big mortgage in the expectation your income is going to rise, but the NHS is facing a period where that is not going to happen.”

Dr Mark Porter, of the British Medical Association, added: ”Locking the NHS into long-term contracts with the private sector has made entire local health economies more vulnerable to changing conditions.

”Now the financial crisis has changed conditions beyond recognition, so trusts tied into PFI deals have even less freedom to make business decisions that protect services, making cuts and closures more likely.”

Nigel Edwards, director of policy at the NHS Confederation, which represents trusts, told the BBC: ”They were planned for a different world. I’m sure that in some cases people feel their hands are tied.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-facing-65bn-mortgage-bill-for-PFI

The official cause of Dr David Kelly’s death is extremely unlikely say a group of medical experts.
The inquest into the death of David Kelly was suspended before the Hutton inquiry and not resumed afterwards in one of bliar’s many spin events.

A group of prominent legal and medical experts have called for a full inquest into the death of the government scientist David Kelly in 2003.

An inquest was suspended by Lord Falconer, then lord chancellor, before the Hutton inquiry into the circumstances of the scientist’s death. It was not resumed after Hutton’s report in 2004 concluded that Kelly killed himself by cutting an artery in his wrist.

Nine experts including Michael Powers, a QC and former coroner, and Julian Blon, a professor of intensive care medicine, said in a letter to the Times that the official cause of death – haemorrhage from the severed artery – was “extremely unlikely”.

“Insufficient blood would have been lost to threaten life,” they said. “Absent a quantitative assessment of the blood lost and of the blood remaining in the great vessels, the conclusion that death occurred as a consequence of haemorrhage is unsafe.”

Kelly’s body was found in woods close to his Oxfordshire home in 2003, shortly after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC report casting doubt on the government’s claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which could be fired within 45 minutes.

Lord Hutton concluded that “the principal cause of death was bleeding from incised wounds to his left wrist which Dr Kelly had inflicted on himself with the knife found beside his body”.

In January, five doctors who made an application to the Oxford coroner to have the inquest reopened, were told that Hutton made a ruling in 2003 to keep medical reports and photographs closed for 70 years. Hutton responded by saying the documents could be revealed to doctors and that he had made the gagging order to spare Kelly’s family “unnecessary distress”.

Hopes for a new inquest have been raised by the change in government. Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, said in April, when he was shadow justice secretary, that the Tories would consider a new inquest into Kelly’s death. He also called for a review of the government’s decision not to release related medical records and postmortem documents.

Grieve is looking at the matter with the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke. Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP and a junior minister in the coalition government, supports resumption of the inquest. He resigned from the front bench while in opposition to write a book, The Strange Death of David Kelly, which argued that the scientist’s life had been “deliberately taken by others”.

The Hutton inquiry applied a less stringent test than would have been used in an inquest, where a coroner has to be sure “beyond reasonable doubt” that a person intended to kill themselves.

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/13/experts-call-david-kelly-inquest