Last week the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Midwives joined ranks with the BMA in calling for the Health and Social Bill to be dropped completely, stating their “outright opposition”. At this stage in the Bill’s progress it seems unlikely that it will be defeated. The colleges know this and we can only assume that their change of heart embodies a protest about pay and pension as much as a desire to distance themselves from the Bill itself. Moreover, anyone working with the NHS knows that administrative change is now too far advanced for the clock to be turned back.
But there is a serious challenge attached to the RCN and RCM’s decision to oppose the Bill, which the government ought to heed. Implementation of NHS reform is currently threatening to consume the NHS. The need for genuine clinical buy-in cannot be ignored. Nurses are on the frontline when it comes to patient care and experience and they received their share of bad press in 2011. Most nurses, who routinely deliver high levels of care, currently have little faith that the reforms are going to help them to do their jobs better as resource becomes more scarce.
The RCN’s “outright opposition” to the Health and Social Care Bill may not affect the Bill’s safe passage but that will mark the end of the beginning not the beginning of the end. At some point the government will have to confront the need to win back the support of those on whom the NHS ultimately depends.
- January 23, 2012 posted by Rosie Beauchamp | Permalink
