Health unions welcome Committee’s proposals

The Royal College of Midwives has welcomed a Health Select Committee report urging changes to the NHS reforms.

Commenting on yesterday’s report, Cathy Warwick, general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, said: “This is a timely report and one that I support and welcome. The proposals are sound and if implemented would help to make sense of what so far has been a confusing and poorly thought through reform.

“The report’s suggestion for a broad base of health and social care experts on commissioning boards is particularly welcome. GPs are highly qualified but are on the whole generalists. To commission services effectively and appropriately they will need the expertise and input of people who know their particular field. I would though have liked to see midwives referenced specifically as one of those key professionals.

“There is now an opportunity for the Government to pause, listen and reflect on what it has so far proposed. There is nothing wrong in that.”

The committee urged “significant change” to the reforms, including having a far wider range of people on Local Commissioning Boards and to make them public, it recommends renaming ‘GP consortia’ as ‘NHS Commissioning Authorities’, that Health and Wellbeing Boards should be scrapped as unnecessary if its own proposals are adopted, and that the primary, secondary and community care should all be commissioned by the same body.

The Committee’s chairman, former Conservative health secretary Stephen Dorrell MP, said: “We believe it is crucial to get the reform of NHS commissioning right if the service is to confront the massive financial challenge it now faces. Our report contains a set of practical proposals to strengthen the Health and Social Care Bill and make it better able to meet the Government’s objectives.

”Our proposals are designed to ensure that NHS Commissioning involves all stakeholders – GPs, certainly, but also nurses, hospital doctors, and representatives of social care and local communities. We believe this broadening of the base for commissioning is vital if we are to achieve the changes that are necessary to allow the NHS deliver properly coordinated healthcare.”