Diane urges Coalition to rethink 'potentially disastrous' reorganisation of the NHS

18 Nov 2010

Diane yesterday urged the Coalition to rethink its planned reorganisation of the NHS, saying the result would be “potentially disastrous”.

Diane spoke in yesterday’s Opposition Day debate brought by Labour to urge the Coalition to stop “an ideological gamble with successful services” as laid out in their White Paper released in July.

Labour also asked the Coalition to come clean over funding saying that the NHS would not see a real terms increase, as they had promised.

Diane said that the £1.7 billion cost for the changes could be better spent and warned that the cost of redundancies would run to “hundreds of thousands”.

She also said the reorganisation would all put extra strain on the NHS over the busy winter period.

Diane said today:

“Yesterday’s debate gave us the opportunity to highlight some of the fatal flaws in the Coalition’s White Paper.

They are gambling with the NHS at one of its busiest times and are spending billions on a reorganisation which could be potentially disastrous for the health system in this country.

They are also still promising increases in funding year on year, which we will simply not see.

It is about time the Coalition came clean over what is an ill thought-out, unnecessary, top-down reorganisation which will leave the NHS in chaos for years to come.”



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