20.02.12
Opponents to Bill ‘excluded’ from NHS reform meeting
Prime Minister David Cameron is set to host talks on implementing plans for reform in the NHS today.
He is meeting healthcare professionals to discuss the issues and to push the case for change, but opponents to the Bill, such as the BMA and the RCN, have not been invited to attend.
In a statement on the meeting, the British Medical Association said: “It would seem odd if the major bodies representing health professionals were not included.”
But health minister Simon Burns told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this was just one of many such meetings, adding: “We are on this occasion meeting those organisations who are constructively engaged in implementing the modernisation.”
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said: “It may sound like a small point to David Cameron but I wish to remind him that he doesn’t yet have Parliament’s permission to implement reforms nobody wants and for which no-one voted.
“This has all the hallmarks of an event thrown together in a last-ditch, desperate bid to shore up collapsing support for the Bill.
“It would appear to be so last-minute that a number of important organisations have been left off the invite list, or maybe it's because the PM wouldn’t like what they’ve got to say.”
The Government said the meeting was for groups that are ‘constructively engaged’ with the reforms.
In the meeting, Cameron will point to evidence that emergency hospital admissions have fallen year-on-year for the first time, with a 0.5% decline in 2011 compared to a 36% increase between 2001 and 2010.
Image c. World Economic Forum
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