"I’m saving the NHS by giving it to patients and the staff of the NHS"

Andrew Lansley, Any Questions, 25 February 2011

The transcript of the NHS reform-related sections of the most recent Any Questions reveal a few choice points on the current thinking of Our Saviour Andrew Lansley.

1. 'I will deny thee eight times' - Our Saviour is silent whether GPs can choose between providers of equal quality on the basis of price

I'm very grateful to a long-standing Health Policy Insight reader who gave up an indecent amount of her weekend to provide this transcription of the NHS reform-related questions to a panel including SOS Lansley on the most recent edition of BBC Radio 4's Any Questions.

Any Questions, BBC Radio 4. Aylsham, Norfolk. 25 February 2011
Sarah Gray: As a highly satisfied user of the NHS, what do I stand to gain from the proposals for the Health Service?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Airplane! was one of the funniest films of the 1980s, spoofing the highly successful genre of 1970s disaster movies (Airport, Towering Inferno et al).

Thus we think of its most famous lines of dialogue - "Surely you can't be serious?" "I am serious, and stop calling me Shirley" - as we read Baroness Williams' op-ed today for The Times (paywalled).

The New World is becoming clearer and the battle lines drawn even more sharply.

Labour’s shadow health secretary John Healey wrote to SOS Lansley on Tuesday evening regarding the recent confusion over price competition.

Irwin Brown of the Socialist Health Association suggests a strange consensus is emerging on the real way to deliver reform – and it’s not SOS Lansley’s.

In the 2010 election, the NHS hardly featured as an issue. The coalition agreement was cast as if the NHS was to be spared funding cuts and major changes – neither of which turns out to be true in practice.

Hands up if you can explain the consistency of what’s going on in health policy?

No, thought not.

Within a week, we have had clarification of the U-turn on price competition by Sir David Nicholson; followed by denial from the DH that this U-turn was a U-turn (sure - maybe it was an artichoke).

Simon Bowers of The Guardian reports that SOS Lansley and the NHS's PCTs and SHAs have filed high court proceedings against Reckitt Benckiser.

This comes, with serendipitous timing, on the day after PM David 'That Nice Mr' Cameron's cri de coeur against state monopolies and on behalf of greater competition.

PM David Cameron's new head of policy development Paul Kirby, appointed on Friday, has form in his view of the public services.

Kirby, a former partner at management consultancy KPMG, was one of the main authors of the not-very-good KPMG report Paying For Success, which we reviewed briefly and unfavourably last year.

The DH has published its notes for the Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform
Committee.

Just the 232 pages.

Now, the House of Lords is where some very serious debate and discussion about the Bill proposals can take place. There are some seriously clued-up individuals - Crisp, Hunt, Thornton, Winston - with a real hinterland of knowledge.

For the first time, the Coalition Government appears to be under significant external pressure on NHS policy.

They may come to regret their efforts in 'explain NHS reform' week.

Prior to that, beyond the small but perfectly-formed world that we know and love as policyland, few people understood or indeed greatly cared about the financial flows or management of the NHS.