NHS Waste of money and resources

I know the comparison with a household budget is not always the correct way to look at it, but it is rather like me desperately looking around my house to see what I can sell at a boot sale to pay this month's housekeeping. If I sell my cooker and my fridge, and then have to rent replacements I will pay out more in the long term. Future generations are going to curse us all as they pay huge amounts of PFI on what will be crumbling public buildings, as their children jog indoors on treadmills because our generation sold off the playing fields, as they face a lifetime of moving from rented house to rented house with the uncertainty that entails. Not everything in the golden past was wonderful, but reading Alan Johnson's 2nd part of his biography where as a very young father he was able to pay rent on his council house, put food on the table, and have a pint on a Friday night I wonder where we have gone wrong. No, scratch that comment, I do know where we have gone wrong, and my conscience is clear because I didn't vote for the bloody woman or her government.

When Margaret Thatcher started to sell off public assets it did not go down well with Harold MacMillan.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1ssGrq5S3w

MacMillan and families like his wanted to pass down their assets to future generations. Of course many families never had much in the way of family silver but we all still own many precious assets although the privatisation begun under Thatcher has already robbed future generations of much and schemes like PFI merely involve passing on debt. It is a disgrace that short-term profiting to cover up mismanagement and lack of investment should be allowed to empoverish our children and grandchildren.

So Varian what will happen when said hospitals need to expand? Open another department or clinic? They will not have the land to do so. This is so short sighted it is unbelievable. When will governments ( mainly Conservative, it has to be said) realise that they cannot keep subsidising the running costs of the country by selling off every damned asset? Right from selling off council houses without using the funds to replace them through to this latest brilliant idea.

Theresa May has vowed to implement the Naylor proposals, which advises the government to sell off NHS assets in order to bring the health service budget under control. It could potentially mean £5.7bn worth of NHS assets are sold off to private firms or house-builders.

Currently all NHS land is controlled by the publicly-owned company NHS Property Services Ltd. The report calls for "urgent action to accelerate" land sales and transfer the property out of public hands. The government has said it will rewards hospitals who sell "surplus" land as quickly as possible.

The list of property identified for sale include; ambulance stations, clinics, staff accommodation and trust headquarters.

nursingnotes.co.uk/may-vows-implement-naylor-report-sell-off-surplus-nhs-property/

petra my experience is similar.

Re public sector negotiating with private sector.
I went to work for the public sector after only having worked in the private sector (25 yrs)
I was horrified at their attitude towards the way money was spent. I can only assume that these negotiators have the same attitude. It doesn't matter, it's only the tax payers hard earned cash.

If the contract was between government, whether central, local or an agency, and the contractor, who else are the government side negotiators if not civil servants.

Local and National governments are negotiating and signing contracts with the private sector and negotiating with public bodies all the time and have been doing so through out my life and before. They should have teams of experienced and competent negotiators. They clearly don't.

^ the civil servants were grossly incompetent in how they negotiated these contracts and the construction companies ran rings round them^

How much of it was negotiated by civil servants, though, MOnica?

During the latter years of the last Labour government I was working at a school which was planned to amalgamate with another local school and relocate to a new PFI build. I got the impression that the PFI contract was to be negotiated at Local Authority level. How much expertise in negotiating such contracts would you have expected to exist at that level? Look at the way that Amey has managed to run rings round Sheffield council and is busily cutting down swathes of healthy street trees. Sheffield appears to be unable to stop them because of the huge amount of compensation they would have to pay for terminating the contract.

Even at national level would you expect a high level of expertise in civil servants who had, I assume, previously had very little to do with such contracts? I'm completely hazy on this.

If you read trisher's post that I referenced, petra you will see that it didn't affect patient care or NHS services.

(Though I completely agree that PFI is a disaster)

PFI was first used in developing countries who desperately needed key infrastructure like power stations and water treatment plants but after the 1980 third world funding crisis could not raise commercial loans. In those narrow circumstances PFI had a role to play. But in a modern economy there is no place for them.

But it is not just the PFI system that was at fault, the civil servants were grossly incompetent in how they negotiated these contracts and the construction companies ran rings round them. These contracts often included long term contracts for the contractor to undertake all the maintenance and supply of goods to the facility after it was operational leading to situations where changing a light bulb could cost £200, a pair of latex gloves £5.

I remember when I first heard of PFI, thinking "that is just plain wrong". It was one of these dreadful policies like selling off council houses at a big discount without replacing them and privatising the railways by separating the track from the trains that to me, smacked of short-termism which would eventually have to be paid for.

In 1992 PFI was implemented for the first time in the UK by the Conservative government of John Major. It immediately proved controversial, and was attacked by the Labour Party while in opposition. Labour critics such as the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Harriet Harman, said that PFI was really a back-door form of privatisation (House of Commons, 7 December 1993), and the future Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, warned that "apparent savings now could be countered by the formidable commitment on revenue expenditure in years to come".[10]

The use of PFI was very limited until 1997 but became widespread under the New Labour government.[11]

MaizieD
I don't know what the up to date figures are, but in 2015 the NHS was spending more than £3,700 every minute to pay for PFI hospitals.
How can this obscene amount of money not affect patient or NHS services?

I suggest that you go back a page and read trisher's post at 10.59, notanan

Or can you detail how Labour failed the health service in the 1997 -2010 period (apart from foolishly embracing PFI, which has left the NHS with a huge debt burden, but which didn't affect patient care or NHS services)?

previous governments paved the way for the current NHS situation. Labour are just as responsible as Torys.

After I broke my ankle in 2009, my equipment was picked up around 3 months post op, cleaned and reused.

In 2012, after my right knee replacement, I kept items in my shed and was able to use the lot this time when I had my left knee replaced.

SS are lending me a trolley and they do not want it back so my that will be going into the shed also.

I had 2 pairs of crutches from 5 years ago and I took them with me for this recent surgery because I did not want 3 pairs of crutches. At least if friends need to borrow anything after I have finished in a week or two, they are here. I have a feeling my little shed maybe over loaded.

It must depend which part of the country one lives in whether the items are reusable or not. I live in London.

OK lemon I'll stop "narrow party politics" when this Tory government makes sure the NHS is properly funded, promises no more privatisation, reinstates nursing bursaries and listens to the experts in all medical areas. Until then I will stick to supporting the party who began the NHS and have proved over the years to be the only party which fully supports a National Health Service that provides good care for everyone.

The problem is Maizie that the posters who support this government just cannot accept that they do any wrong at all - their uncritical adoration means that they should never be held to account.

Why on earth does 'narrow party politics have to stop'? That's the way the country has been run ever since the inception of 'parliamentary democracy'. While ever we have First Past the Post as our voting system our governments will veer from one ideological stance to another.

And while ever we, the people, cling to this absurd notion that the national economy can be run like a household budget and mainstream parties perpetrate it because they don't dare propose any other way for fear of losing votes of 'the people' who believe it, nothing will ever change.

When my OH broke his ankle and needed a wheelchair for a short time, we were able to hire or borrow one from our local branch of the Red Cross. I can't remember how much it cost. It may just have been a voluntary donation. Why not offer any spare equipment to them?

What circumstances have changed lemon other than relatively the NHS budget has decreased and the population has increased ( and oh yes the Tories in power).

No, it’s not ‘now’, go back to my earliest post today MaizieD where I stated it was too complex a problem to blame any one party.
Circumstances have changed in all kinds of ways since 2010.
Narrow party politics has got to stop.

Ah now it's inevitable and no-one's fault. Except it massively is. If things improved between 1997 and 2010 (and presumably there was a population increase then) why have they not improved 2010-2018?

The trouble with taking a partisan view and blaming all ills on a particular party is that it gives a blinkered overall view of things.
From all I have read on the NHS it is not simply about throwing money at it, but rather how money is used.
Also since 2010 we have had massive increases in population using all NHS services.We have also had (almost) a financial meltdown, due to the banking crisis.It was always going to take a long time to get over that.
It has been the popular cry ‘oh the Tories’ or ‘Oh, Labour’ for everything under the sun, ever since I can remember.
The NHS cannot keep grinding on the way it has always done, because this country is not the same as it was in 1958,
Or in 1998 come to that.Therefore it needs a proper overview, free from any political dogma/slant as to the best way forward for it.

Goodness knows what the level of GPs in deprived areas is now

Sorry lemon the evidence is different
Waiting lists and waiting times improved dramatically under Labour and the number of GPs per head increased. However research by the National Audit Office suggests that inequalities in access to GPs between more and less deprived areas were not fully eliminated by 2010.
Other significant improvements in healthcare quality, according to the ONS, included better post- operative survival rates and reductions in avoidable mortality. Overall patient experience scores were high in a range of service areas. According to the British Social Attitudes Survey, public satisfaction with National Health Services rose from 36 per cent in 1997 to 71 per cent in 2010.