Health reform is our biggest mistake in this parliament, says Tory ex-minister

[LeftishBrit]

Asked if he regards the Health and Social Care Act of 2012, driven through the Commons by Andrew Lansley in the face of furious opposition from the health sector, as the biggest mistake of this parliament he is in no doubt at all. “Yes I do agree with that. The reason I agree with it is partly for the political fallout, but the thing I care most about is the lost opportunity in the health and care system.”

In a dig at Lansley, he says politicians these days don’t think through their ideas and head off instead in search of headlines. In Thatcher’s day he believes there was more intellectual and policy rigour. “Politicians have always been interested in headlines, of course they have. But they have become more willing to settle for a story than a policy,” he said.

Dorrell voted for the Lansley bill – which abolished primary care trusts and strategic health authorities and transferred £80bn of healthcare funding to clinical commissioning groups – because it introduced “some worthwhile changes” such as health and wellbeing boards. But he says the massive institutional reorganisation was largely unnecessary and meant the government overlooked the far more urgent challenge of improving the NHS so that fewer people have to go into hospital, and that those who do are discharged as soon as possible...

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He insists that he told the powers that be at the time that they were on the wrong road. “I remember very well writing it down, expressing my view and being told ‘we have thought about your view, we respect it, but we disagree with it.’ ”...

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/31/health-reform-tories-biggest-mistake-parliament-nhs-stephen-dorrell-mp


Why do MPs ALWAYS feel they've got to vote with their government, even when they know it's wrong? (don't answer; I know it's the system; that's one reason I could never be an MP).

P.S. that means my fave Labour politician , Alan Milburn, is now officially to the right of Dorrell.