Medical Advice from the Rag Trade

The Conservative chair of the Commons select committee on health has proclaimed that the Government's protection of front-line NHS services will, in fact, involve the reduction of front-line NHS services, and has also noted with commendable honesty and more than a little understatement that "very little of the solution" to the Health Service's problems has to do with Twizzler Lansley's Health and Social Care bill.

Stephen Dorrell, a former draper and, presumably, future private health company director whose business ethics have been described as slightly inferior to those of the People's Republic of China, was Secretary of State for Health at the fag-end of the fag-end of the Conservative government which introduced the PFI boondoggle; and he seems a bit annoyed at having been left out of the Cabinet this time. The Twizzler's bill, he argues, "misses the central challenge facing the care system"; in Standard English, this means that the Twizzler's bill might have acquitted itself a good deal better, and might even been perceived by the public as a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, if only it had been the work of one Stephen Dorrell instead.

Speaking to the National Children and Adult Services Conference, Dorrell observed that the bulk of NHS care is for fifteen million people who suffer one or more long-term conditions but do not need regular hospital treatment, and that according to the National Audit Office thirty per cent of non-emergency hospital admissions could be avoided with better services in the community. "Just think about what we could do with the resources that would be freed if that 30% were avoided because we delivered more integrated, more effective, high-quality frontline community-based services," Dorrell fantasised. In Standard English, this appears to mean that another few million might be saved to pay off the Health Service's PFI debts if more proles can be made to look after themselves, or at least fall apart without complaining too much.