Government targeting – that of Taxpayers and Lowering Standards.

by Professor | March 19, 2009 at 08:22 am

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Today Health Secretary Alan Johnson apologises on behalf of the Government and the NHS for the "pain and anguish" caused by the failings at a Stafford hospital due to its own Trust whom were obsessed in meeting Governmental Finance and Organisational change targets.

It has been reported that Patients were allegedly left screaming in pain, sat in soiled bedding for hours, not given their regular medication, left without food and drink [ some drinking from flower vases ] and operations repeatedly cancelled while “cost savings” provided inadequately trained staff and junior Doctors that were left alone in charge at night. Also stated is that between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected over a three year period due to Poor Standards of care which “had been” reported by patients, relatives, Nurses and Doctors .

In been accepted that the above dreadful situation has caused great suffering for some three years, to which a Health Secretary is now forced to apologise, but is it simply just a matter of apologising and calling for an independent review of the hospital at more cost to Tax Payers. All of this raises serious questions toward not only the Trust involved but also of the Governments itself whom dictate “targets” but apparently have no “feedback mechanism” in measuring the effects that such targets have in providing more for financially less and less, thus lowering Standards!. Just where, the Public must now ask, is all of “their Money” being channelled to in respect of their care given that they must continually accept less and less value for that money while being told that they must spend spend spend in support of the Economy. The answer of course may lie in Government Quango’s. Could it be true that in one hospital there exists some 20 Quango’s watching over Hospital Management and whom are paid high salaries in reducing expenditure while Doctors and Nurses are held to account over failure and not they to which Policing ignores.

The reason why MP’s simply don’t know what is going on any longer within Britain is because their status has dwindled along with their power in “out-sourcing its accountability and responsibility” to Quango’s, to which there are many from the Child Support Agency [ failed ], the Financial Services Authority [ FSA ] and the Health & Safety Executive plus thousands of others. Back in the 1990’s “Quango” was the key word to New Labour when Mr Blair announced an end to executive Agencies for monitoring purposes whereby the Government take on more accountability and responsibility themselves towards that of their Tax Payers! Spin driven Mr Blair though said one thing but actually meant the opposite since from 1998 to 2006 the cost of Quango’s actually increased from £24.1bn to £167.5billion. Now is this BILLION in short scale [ 109 <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />US / Modern Britain ] or long scale [ 1012 Traditional Britain ] however even in short scale £167,500,000,000 [ + 000? ] is a huge amount of Tax Payers Money. Then of course one must not forget the £millions spent by the Government itself, at cost to Tax payers, in promoting itself through Advertising while the Quango’s pay themselves large Bonuses having taken over the responsibility and accountability from the Government.

As to the current recession Mr Darling announced that the price of Oil was the main problem however not mentioning the real problem – that of Political negligence in allowing themselves to become simply observers as to others whom provide Public Service provisions on their behalf, while also allowing deregulation to the Financial Industry such that it profitise while Tax Payers build mountains of debt. Least not forget Credit Default Swops [ CDS’s – US originated in 1997 ] that can yield vast profits by successfully gambling on “failure as an outcome”. Would this account for why the Banking System has now become DISTRUST frozen given that THEIR LOANS could become Profits to CDS owners if funded Businesses default within a designated period of time. One CDS payout creates one “black hole” that other investors must refill however if many many Businesses/Projects fail that hole becomes one very large crater of debt to which most investors must fill and eventually Governments Bail out else watch their entire economies collapse!. Now Imagine the serious consequences to all investors and the prosperity of taxpayers too should CDS’s ever be applied to out-sourced Government Projects that fail to which there are many.

On the matter of NHS Hospitals perhaps its time that Private Health Care be incorporated into the NHS and FREE for all thus forcing a “common quality of care” which would then become a single focus for the Governmental as oppose to two in having DOUBLE STANDARDS. Its simply no good Dr Brown saying that the operation was a complete success but the patient died but will the same occur given holes in the economy to which he is administrating a transfusion while blaming others whom he has allowed to make major decisions affecting a Nation on his behalf?.

OLD News concerning Quango’s and spending

01 05 2008Supermarket shake-up plan attacked. Retailers have criticised new curbs on supermarket dominance of the grocery sector with one of the "big four" warning they could lead to higher prices for consumers. It added to criticisms of an ombudsman, saying "there can be no justification for a multi-million pound quango which would ultimately be paid for by customers".

21 05 2008Justice reform success 'overstated'

The Government's justice reforms have had little impact on youth crime and ministers have "overstated" their success, experts have claimed. All the expenditure and activity to reduce youth crime has had no measurable impact." The experts assessed the impact of reforms since the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act which set up the Youth Justice Board - the quango which oversees the way young criminals are punished

2008 Dec 12Councils are spending nearly £430 million a year on publicity, according to new figures. On average, each council spent £965,986 last year - although six had a bill of more than £5 million. In the middle of a recession, councils need to cut back on propaganda and spin doctors and deliver savings to taxpayers." Shadow Communities Secretary Eric Pickles warned that the bill was likely to increase because the Government was loosening regulations on town hall publicity. "I fear Government plans to revoke vital guidance will lead to a return of partisan propaganda on the rates, and will do nothing to improve frontline services," he added.

03 01 2009NHS agency staff wages 'inflated'. The data also showed some agencies were taking large "cuts" in return for supplying workers to the NHS. Whipps Cross University Hospitals NHS Trust said it paid £188 an hour for an anaesthetics medical consultant - equivalent to an annual salary of £366,000. Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust paid £167 for an A&E doctor, equivalent to an annual salary of £326,000, and Dorset Primary Care Trust paid £158 an hour for a prison GP, equivalent to an annual salary of £307,000. Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust paid £131 for a doctor, equivalent to an annual salary of £255,000. Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust paid £157 an hour for a senior manager, equivalent to an annual salary of £306,000. Trusts also paid high sums for non-clinical staff, the figures showed., Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust paid £116 per hour for a nurse but the agency took £50 (43%), and Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust paid £94 per hour for a nurse but the agency took £40 (43%). Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust paid £105 per hour for a doctor but the agency took £45 (33%). Almost £800 million was spent on agency staff in 2006/07, although the Department of Health insists this figure is falling

14 01 2009NHS C.diff outbreaks.Nurses are to be questioned by police over a string of deaths during a Clostridium difficile outbreak at a hospital. A major incident room with a team of officers has been set up at Dumbarton Police Station, while the HSE team has three inspectors and three specialists.

14 06 2008Monthly rubbish collections on the way - Government's waste quango. Monthly rubbish collections on the way, waste chief warns. Household rubbish collections in Britain are set to be cut to just one a month, according to a director of the government's waste quango.

1973: HRM and Training Initiatives in the UK. Employment and Training Act: capped ITB levies and ITB admin. costs were then paid by government (centralising national training strategy even more). three job and training centred quangos - the Manpower Services Commission [ MSC ], the Employment Services Agency [ ESA ] and the Training Services Agency [ TSA ] were set up. In the 1980’s Mrs Thatcher scrapped ITB’s and viewed training as employment and thus MSC training was introduced for the young and long term unemployed [ YOPs and TOPS ]. Government Skill Centres also emerged but after their privatization by Mrs Thatcher they disappeared.

2008:Opposition Day - 1.29 pm

Mr. Francis Maude (Horsham) (Con):I beg to move, That this House notes with concern the Government’s management of the Civil Service; condemns the excessive increase in the Government’s spending on communications, advertising and marketing; further notes with alarm the increasing number of civil servants employed as press and communications officers despite the aims of the Gershon Review to reduce the administrative costs of Government; observes the increase in the number of political ministerial adviser appointees; further notes the creation of bodies and quangos which are unaccountable to the public; considers there to be widespread failures in the efficient implementation of Government policies by No. 10 Downing Street, Government departments and agencies; and calls on the Government to enshrine Civil Service independence in law in a Civil Service Act, bring in a strengthened Ministerial Code and a more transparent means of enforcing it, ask the Committee on Standards in Public Life to establish a code of conduct for the impartiality and accuracy of Government publications and advertising campaigns, and to take urgent steps to restore trust in the UK system of government by making it more efficient, transparent, accountable and effective. I start by declaring the interests against my name in the Register of Members’ Interests. The Tony Blair era of government became synonymous with spin. At the very outset of that Government back in 1997, there were huge increases in the number of special advisers; the figure more than doubled. In no Department was there a greater dedication to the cult of spin than in Her Majesty’s Treasury. We all remember—I do so vividly, as I was shadow Chancellor: one of many holders of that post—the notorious double-counted spending increases in the pre-Budget report of autumn 1998, in which spending increases for the whole comprehensive spending review period were conveniently added together to give a sum much greater than that which was being spent. That was the first indication

2008 May 7: ……..that with the then Chancellor—now Prime Minister—it was wise to count the spoons carefully and decipher the fine print with a magnifying glass before deciding to rely on what he said.Despite that history, it is fair to say that when the Prime Minister took office in the middle of last year, there was a sigh of relief that the first announcement of the age of change was that the era of spin was definitively over. Parliament, we were told, was to be told about things before the press and the media. Spin was consigned to history—a relic of the Blairite-Mandelsonist era of the past. The right hon. Gentleman said that “one of my first acts as Prime Minister would be to restore power to Parliament in order to build the trust of the British people in our democracy.” At the time, the soon to be elected deputy leader of the Labour party—now the Leader of the House—made an even more explicit promise: “In future, under a Gordon Brown regime, we need to have no spin, no briefing, no secrets, and respect for Parliament” The right hon. and learned Lady’s final point about treating Parliament with respect and making statements to the House before the media was instantly more honoured in the breach than in the observance. We have worked out that on average, the media have been briefed about two announcements a week before they are made to Parliament. Often, announcements are not made to Parliament at all, even after the event. What of the pledge to cut back on spin, and put the era of spin in the past? The simple truth is that there has been no reduction in the number of spin doctors and special advisers from the Blair era, or perhaps only a tiny one. The age of change turns out to be the age of no change . Indeed, the Government’s answers, to specific questions, Department by Department, on the scale of the spin machine are a master-class in the spinning of information to give a false impression. They exclude, for example, the majority of communications personnel, limiting the numbers to the narrowest possible definition of “press officer” . The White Book directory tells the full story of a Government spin machine that has spiralled out of control. Advertising costs have also spiralled. The Government have spent over £800 million on advertising in the past five years alone. The annual spend has quadrupled since Labour came to power. No doubt under the rigorous financial stewardship of the Prime Minister, assisted by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster as his adviser for much of the time, it was spent immensely prudently. Is the advertising spend simply the overhang of the reckless Blairite era? No, because the figures clearly show that since the Prime Minister took over, the advertising spend has increased still further by four times the rate of inflation

20 08 2007Quangos: the runaway gravy train. Westminster January 12, 1995 [ Brown ] shadow chancellor stood up and delivered a speech shot through with confidence - a speech that is about to come back and haunt him. "The biggest question… is why our constitution is over-centralised, over-secretive and over-bureaucratic and why there is not more openness and accountability," said the younger Gordon Brown. "The real alternative is a bonfire of the quangos and greater democracy." Back in the mid-1990s, culling quangos was at the heart of the New Labour project.

In fact, the cost of executive agencies, advisory bodies, independent monitoring boards and other quangos has mushroomed under New Labour. Spending on such agencies soared to £167.5billion in 2006, up from £24.1bn in 1998. over the past two years ministers have created 200 quangos.