It may actually turn out to be a tactical body swerve which leaves the opposition standing while the policy continues its direction of travel. Thus it is with the “natural break” announced for the Health and Social Care Bill.
It appears that in the face of the widest possible protests – from, among others, the Royal College of Nursing, and the British Medical Association which wants the bill withdrawn wholesale – Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has been forced to concede and amend his NHS “reforms” (for which read demolition plans). It is not surprising that some nod to these objectors had to be seen to be given, since it is difficult to see who supports his proposals apart from the private companies for whom they will provide a financial bonanza.
Even the Prime Minister and most definitely some of his Liberal Democrat coalition colleagues are suffering pangs of doubt over Mr Lansley’s nuclear option.
So the Health Secretary is to take advantage of the Easter break – and successive ones which leave little time for legislative passage and have resulted in no Queen’s Speech until next spring to allow more time – in order to listen more carefully to the objections. The proffered line from his office is that he will pay particular attention to the ameliorative proposals from the Health Select Committee, chaired by the former Tory Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell. Nick Clegg went further to insist that the two-month “listening exercise” was not presentation or spin but could lead to “substantive” changes.
This is either wishful thinking or it is indeed spin. For by every indication thus far, Mr Lansley’s idea of a listening exercise is that the opponents will have to do a lot more listening to him continuing to ram his message home. When he concedes that the pace of the legislation has been too fast and needs to be slowed he actually means that it was too fast for people to understand the intrinsic merits of the proposals. What he apparently does not get is that the objections are based not on pace but on the potential impact of the bill on the health service which, fundamentally, is to change the NHS into a market place in which care comes second to finance and where patients are transformed into unit-cost consumers. That primary aim has not been, and will not be, shifted.
As the Nye Bevan Society, one organisation that knows a thing or two about the NHS, warned after Mr Lansley’s statement to the House of Commons, the “natural break” is a tactical delay to slow down the opposition, to take the current considerable wind out of its sails and weaken the momentum of protest. Rather than a listening exercise it is a breathing space for the Government to regroup and to better rehearse and choreograph its arguments. The Society has identified the only acceptable way forward for Labour, in writing to leader Ed Miliband to call for a parliamentary campaign to have the bill withdrawn. No amendments, no other course, can render it palatable.
