Dear Mo
Judgement - the campaign moves on
Today the High Court handed down its judgement on the judicial review we brought against the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and NHS England on their introduction of Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs). We had originally brought our claim on four grounds - two on the lack of proper consultation, one on the legality of the idea itself, and one on grounds of lack of clarity and transparency. We withdrew our claim on the consultation grounds when our opponents conceded that they would not proceed without a full national consultation, so this success was in the bag.
Unfortunately, the Court has found against us on the law on the other two grounds. Read more about this here and on the CrowdJustice site: We deeply regret the judgement and we imagine you will share our disappointment. But we hope its effect will be to strengthen resolve to hold the government to account during the consultation, and raise public awareness of the issues at stake if contracts for billions of pounds of public money lasting ten or more years are awarded to new bodies not established by statute, which could be partly or wholly private companies, and which could outsource all their services if they wished. NHS Reinstatement Bill Professor Allyson Pollock and Peter Roderick have been discussing the re-tabling of the NHS Reinstatement Bill in the House of Commons on 11 July 2018 with Eleanor Smith, MP for Wolverhampton South West. We are delighted that an MP with Eleanor’s experience and commitment wants to do this.
You can find here the proposed Bill that we have sent to Eleanor, which contains a number of changes from the previous Bill as presented by Margaret Greenwood MP, and the Explanatory Notes that we have prepared are here.
In short, the Bill proposes to fully restore the NHS in England by 2021 as an accountable public service by reversing nearly 30 years of marketisation, by abolishing the purchaser-provider split, ending contracting, and re-establishing public bodies that plan and provide integrated services and that are accountable to local communities.
The Bill gives flexibility in how it would be implemented, led by current bodies, including local authorities.
Among other things, it would: - reinstate the government’s duty to provide the key NHS services throughout England, including hospitals, medical and nursing services, primary care, mental health and community services
- declare the NHS to be a “non-economic service of general interest” and “a service supplied in the exercise of governmental authority” so asserting the full competence of Parliament and the devolved bodies to legislate for the NHS without being trumped by EU competition law (for so long as the UK is an EU Member State) and the World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Trade in Services
- exclude the NHS from international trade deals
- repeal the competition and core marketisation provisions of the 2012 Act
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