From The Metro:
The Tories are to pledge to divert cash from Labour's "failing" community cohesion schemes to pay for youngsters to take part in a civilian "national service".
Party leader David Cameron will use his first major press conference of the General Election campaign to give more details of plans for a National Citizen Service. He will hail the offer of two-month summer social action activities such as looking after the elderly as a cure for the "national scandal of all this wasted promise".
After two days of campaigning dominated by the row over Tory plans to scrap Labour's planned hike in National Insurance, the party will shift focus to its "Big Society" agenda.
Hands up everybody who said that this was not going to be taxpayer funded. Yes, that means you. The article then covers another very interesting issue:
Conservatives were on Wednesday night playing down reports that an expert brought in to recommend savings in public sector spending to fund their reversal of the NI increase is the chairman of a private company which could gain from reduced NHS resources.
The Guardian reported that General Healthcare Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gershon, had issued a strategy paper stating that there would be "an increasing role for the private sector" in healthcare provision given the "very severe contraction in (NHS) finance, with an £8-£10 billion cut in real terms likely in the three years from 2011".
But Tories pointed out that Mr Cameron intends to recycle the efficiency savings identified by Sir Peter to frontline NHS spending, meaning services would not be cut. "Under our plans, the Department of Health is protected - efficiency savings will be invested back into the frontline," said a spokesman.
This is where it gets really murky, of course. The Grauniad article is actually about a paper prepared by Gershon for the Tories showing how they can make 'efficiency savings' to offset the Tories' proposed non-increase in National Insurance. But then the Tories say that these savings will be 'invested back into the frontline', in which case the savings can't be used to offset the non-increase in National Insurance, can they?
Meet the new boss...
This Is How To Stop This Nonsense...
1 hour ago
8 comments:
The civilian "national service" is once again just tinkering with a symptom instead of addressing the cause. The cause being the low standards of many parents and the education system, once again the state is stepping in taking the responsibility of being both parent and teacher when it is not their job to do so. A culture change is required whereby the state returns responsibility back to the individual. Apart from which the very young people who would most benefit from such a scheme will be the very ones who will not take advantage of it.
The role of the private sector in the NHS is essential if real savings are to be made as the private sector will use resources more efficiently. In fact all of the public sector needs to be reformed to enable provision and payment to be very much a private public partnership, the emphasis being on the private.
A, as to your second point, I have no problems with taxpayer funding/private provision AS LONG AS it is patients who make the final decision where the money is spent.
But I am distinctly unhappy with quangocrats like Gershon lining their own [employer's] pockets, that's what Nulabour is all about.
In the end, it still comes down to double entry bookkeeping - money in, money out.
MW, surely that is the advantage of private provision of NHS services it will be customer driven instead of staff driven as it is now. Private provision will have the effect of incorporating competition and choice.
JH, but the Tories are doing treble-entry bookkeeping - save £6 billion in efficiency (credit) and then spend in on more private stuff (debit) and offset the NI increase (debit).
A, sure, but it's the CHOICE bit that is important, which must mean patients' choice (or parents' or pupils' or whosever else).
I don't want Gershon choosing his own company as preferred NHS provider. That's not CHOICE that's CORPORATISM.
I assume you meant me when you said "This means you". I'm afraid you're wrong again.
The plans for the National Citizen Service have nothing to do with the other plans you were talking about, which were for the Tories to fund training for people to run community groups. In that previous comment, I was merely pointing out that the Tories were only going to fund that training, and not fund running the community groups themselves.
The community groups are not the National Citizen Service.
AC, I am always right about everything and you might actually try reading your own party's manifesto* and admitting that parts of it are a bit dodgy (as I have done in the past over at yours).
This is all part of iDave's Big Society project, so clearly the teenagers doing NCS will be at camps run by the people whose training iDave has funded. The Community Groups = the NCS camps.
* To the extent that the Tories actually have one.
No, you aren't always right. Only most of the time.
I do entirely admit that parts of the Tory manifesto are a bit dodgy, including the National Citizen Service.
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