Shadow Health Secretary Research Articles

Shadow health secretary in talks over how to increase community pharmacy numbers

Shadow health secretary in talks over how to increase community pharmacy numbers

Labour government would axe prescription charges, says shadow health secretary

Labour government would axe prescription charges, says shadow health secretary

Pharmacy drug-switching protocols a ministerial 'power grab', says shadow health secretary

Pharmacy drug-switching protocols a ministerial 'power grab', says shadow health secretary

Association of surgeons in training 40th anniversary conference: Liverpool #ASiT2016.

The Association of Surgeons in Training (ASiT) is a professional body and registered charity working to promote excellence in surgical training for the benefit of junior doctors and patient alike. ASiT is independent of the National Health Service (NHS), Surgical Royal Colleges and specialty associations, and represents trainees in all ten surgical specialities. We were delighted to be celebrating our 40th Anniversary Conference in the fantastic city of Liverpool with over 700 delegates in attendance and in the company of many ASiT Past Presidents. The conference programme focused on how to overcome threats to training in light of the recent turbulent events associated with the junior doctor contract dispute with inspiring talks from Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS Medical Director and Rt Hon Heidi Alexander MP, Shadow Health Secretary. The other central topic to the conference was 'celebrating excellence in surgical training' and we were thankful to many other high profile speakers who attended to help in this celebration. In addition, over £4000 was distributed between more than 30 prizes and was awarded by the incoming President, Mr Adam Williams, to delegates who presented the highest scoring academic work from over 1200 submitted abstracts.

Brexit 'would cost NHS £10 billion'.

Leaving the European Union could mean funding cuts equivalent to losing 1,000 nurses from every hospital trust in England, shadow health secretary Heidi Alexander warned.

Labour: we'll fight the plan.

The Labour party has pledged to fight the government every step of the way over the scrapping of nursing student bursaries, shadow health secretary Heidi Alexander said last week.

Hospital trusts will adapt junior doctor contract if they have to.

England’s health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has reiterated that hospital trusts will be expected to implement the new junior doctor contract for all new trainees from August and move existing junior doctors onto it as they change training posts—or else face losing funding for training posts. But some trusts have told The BMJ that they may be prepared to set their own terms and conditions if faced with unworkable rotas and morale at rock bottom among junior doctors. Responding to an urgent request by Labour’s shadow health secretary, Heidi Alexander, on what Hunt meant by “imposition” of the contract, the health secretary told the House of Commons on 18 April, “It has never been the government’s plan to insist on changes to existing contracts.” He explained, “It will start with those in foundation year 1 from this August and proceed with a phased implementation for other …

Corbyn appoints Heidi Alexander as shadow health secretary

Corbyn appoints Heidi Alexander as shadow health secretary

Cancer care in the UK: we need to be more ambitious.

part of Ciaran Devane* speaks to Francesca Lake, Managing Commissioning Editor: Ciaran Devane is the outgoing Chief Executive of Macmillan Cancer Support. Educated at University College Dublin (Ireland), he holds a degree in biochemical engineering. He also holds a Master’s degree in international policy from George Washington University (DC, USA). Ciaran is a trustee of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations sits on the advisory council of the Cicely Saunders Institute, an institute for research into palliative care (London, UK). Since January 2012, he has also been a Non-Executive Director of the National Health Service England.

NHS needs more generalists not specialists, says Labour

The NHS needs more generalists rather than specialists, Labour’s shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, has said. Speaking at the BMA’s staff, associate specialists, and specialty (SAS) doctors conference on Tuesday 3 June, Burnham said that there needed to be a focus on “whole person care” in the NHS of the future. “For all its great strengths, I would argue that the NHS isn’t ready to face up to the challenges of 21st century care,” he said. “I believe it’s trapped in a 20th …

Shadow health secretary plans to introduce law on disability hate crime

Shadow health secretary plans to introduce law on disability hate crime

Trusts launch recruitment drives in bid to tackle death rate anomalies

Recruitment drives have been launched by at least three hospitals identified as having higher than expected death rates after a government-ordered review criticised them for inadequate staffing. The review by NHS England medical director Sir Bruce Keogh into the care and treatment provided at 14 trusts in England found insufficient numbers of staff at eight of them. Commenting on the review RCN general secretary Peter Carter said: ‘There is an undeniable link between nurse staffing levels and patient mortality and we cannot keep failing to address this issue.’ Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham claimed that 1,117 nursing jobs had been lost at seven of the investigated trusts since May 2010. The review found evidence of an over-reliance on agency staff, and Nursing Standard research has revealed soaring levels of spend on agency nursing staff at two of the trusts. The amount spent on agency staff at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust for example increased from £2 million in 2010/11 to £3.8 million in 2012/13, while United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust spent £977,094 in 2010/11 on agency nurses, which rocketed to £2.3 million in 2012/13. The trust’s board recently approved the recruitment of 80 more nurses. East Lancashire NHS Trust and Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are among the 14 organisations reviewed that are now boosting their nursing workforce. The former has appointed 40 more nurses and intends to hire a further 30 as well as 30 healthcare assistants. At Burton, another 49 nurses have been employed.

More hospital trusts are seeking to diverge from national pay agreements

A further 12 hospital trusts in England are considering joining regional pay deals for NHS staff, bringing the total number of trusts thinking of abandoning nationally negotiated arrangements to 32, Labour’s shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, has warned. Speaking in a parliamentary debate in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Burnham said, “We have identified a further 12 trusts across England that are actively considering opting out of Agenda for Change.” The debate was prompted by a growing concern that employers were increasingly seeking local settlements to pare back the wages bill of healthcare staff in a bid to save cash. In August, an alliance of 20 hospital trusts—the South West Pay Terms and Conditions Consortium—published two discussion …

Hopefully Andy Burnham can rectify the impractical reforms.

The main revelation from the interview with shadow health secretary Andy Burnham (analysis September 26) was that he just might have some firm ideas about what to do with the NHS other than make it cheaper to provide.

‘I will repeal the act and restore the ‘N’ in the NHS,’ says Burnham

Ahead of the Labour Party conference next week, Tamsin Snow speaks to the shadow health secretary about his vision for the national health service

Burnham fights the Health Bill

In his first interview with the nursing press, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham talks about his plans to derail the Health and Social Care Bill and his views on changes to public sector pensions.

White paper plans for PCTs a ‘scandalous political experiment’

‘Madcap’ government plans to abolish primary care trusts (PCTs) and transfer commissioning to GPs must be halted, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham warned last week.

Show me the money

The mid-July press is dominated by the release of the coalition government’s health white paper, outlining their plans for the most radical shake up of the NHS since its conception in 1948. Empowering GPs to commission for patients without going through an intermediary regulatory body, promises the public better care and (reportedly) £20 billion budgetary savings. GPs have advised caution over the speed of introduction and the growth of private delivery models. What remains unclear in the early stages is the position of dental service commissioning which, in the rumourdriven world of primary dental care, may raise the spectre of medical practitioners being responsible for commissioning dental services as well? The Labour party shadow health secretary forecasts that the proposed reforms will ‘signal the end of the NHS as we know it’ and will herald a descent into chaos dominated by market forces and private sector interests. Well it appears he has understood the reform aims but he forgets to mention the country could save significant sums of money by removing tiers of administration.

A new White Paper for health

Since coming to power, the Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, is said to have walked into his office every morning and asked his officers ‘Where is my White Paper?’ Having worked for 6 years as Shadow Health Secretary, he has had longer than most to think about his ideas for the future of the NHS. Less than 50 days into the coalition, the White Paper, Equity and excellence: liberating the NHS, was published (Department of Health (DH), 2010). The new coalition government is clearly set to make policy changes at a real pace.

Keeping the NHS on course: politicans' proposals for the next 4 years

Climatic metaphors describing the state of our economy as chilly, arctic, and frozen are becoming overworked, but it's almost impossible not to think of sea-going terminology to describe what needs to be done to the NHS — steadying the ship, battening down the hatches, rearranging the deckchairs — and a number of these cropped up in my recent interviews with the three political parties' health spokesmen and a reading of their policy documents. Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, describes, in the introduction to the LibDem document on the NHS ‘ A Liberal Blueprint ’,1 the current funding problems of the NHS as ‘the conditions for a perfect storm’, with potentially disastrous consequences. His party's approach to ensuring the survival of the NHS includes an emphasis on decentralisation, on reform of NHS funding, on the development and enfranchisement of the workforce and on supporting patients in taking responsibility for their own health. According to Lamb, centralised management of the NHS has ‘been tested to destruction’, and local accountability is the answer. PCTs will give way to local health boards able to raise revenues and determine patterns of expenditure. Strategic health authorities will be abolished, along with large numbers of quangos, inspectorates, and one-third of posts in the Department of Health. The amount spent by the Department of Health on advertising and public relations will be slashed. Payment by Results will be significantly altered, with changes in the tariff and a strong emphasis on the development of Integrated Care Organisations, with primary care, secondary care, community services and, in some instances, social care organisations working together with unified budgets and aspirations, captured in a LibDem neologism ‘Competitive Localism’. Returning autonomy to NHS staff is seen as a priority, and the Blueprint document is peppered with examples of engaging, …