Jermain Defoe's fury as police cash in on picture of him talking on mobile phone while driving

I Googled 'Road Safety Support' - an offshoot of ACPO - and stopped looking at the end of page 15 ... zilch!

Police evidence photographs of England footballer Jermain Defoe driving while talking on his mobile phone are at the centre of a legal row after being used to publicise a commercial offshoot of Britain’s most powerful policing body, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

The firm, Road Safety Support (RSS), which earns millions providing expert witnesses and advice to help prosecute drivers, has been using the photographs of the footballer at the wheel of his £90,000 Range Rover and other alleged celebrity offenders to drum up business.

RSS began using the pictures at events in January, even though magistrates only heard the case against Defoe at the end of last month ...

ACPO ... despite overseeing police policy on everything from anti-terrorism to public order, ... is a private firm with an income, mostly funded by the taxpayer, of £28-million in the last two years ...

The presentation Who Are Road Safety Support And What Can They Do For You? was written by CPS lawyer Andrew Perry, who is on full-time secondment to RSS.

He explained that RSS is ‘supported by and affiliated to ACPO’ and every slide, including those showing the evidence photos, is headed with the logos of ACPO, the CPS and RSS.

‘Not for profit’ firm RSS is headed by South Yorkshire Police Chief Constable Meredydd Hughes.

He was formerly the chairman of ACPO’s roads policing group but stood down following a driving ban after being caught speeding at 90mph ...

RSS only files ‘abbreviated’ accounts at Companies House which do not disclose its income, but has told speed camera partnerships that its members pay subscriptions of about £900,000 a year ...

Mail on Sunday  05 Sept 2010    Corporate State Britain

Body in charge of UK policing policy is now ... charging the public £70 for a 60p criminal records check

Frontex, Acpo and the policing of Fortress Europe

Call out for 'domestic extremists' to take action against ACPO

ACPO are the mafia of the New Labour corporate fascist state

WTF? Police state is a private company, ACPO!

ACPO in police state shocker

Body in charge of UK policing policy is now ... charging the public £70 for a 60p criminal records check

Elderly 'going hungry on NHS wards'

Elderly people are being left to go hungry on NHS wards, a report said.

Those who enter hospital malnourished can get worse during their stay or become malnourished under the care of NHS staff.

The report from the charity Age UK found almost one in three nurses believe their own relative could enter hospital with nobody noticing they were malnourished.

The study - Still Hungry To Be Heard - builds on previous research which showed some elderly people receive no assistance with meals despite struggling to eat.

Those who have difficulty swallowing are sometimes put at risk of choking by not being given pureed food, while others have their food trays placed out of reach at the end of beds or on tray tables that are too high.

The charity has also heard of elderly people receiving no help with cutting food into smaller pieces or opening lids on containers.

Food trays are also sometimes taken away untouched without any questions, according to the charity.

The study found fewer than half of hospitals screen older patients for malnutrition on admission to hospital and only a third screen patients during their stay.

Just 5 per cent screen on discharge, despite evidence showing good nutrition both in and out of hospital helps people get better.

The report found many hospitals are largely ignoring guidelines which say people should be screened.

Independent  30 Aug 2010    Care of the Elderly    Moral Indifference Log

Tomlinson pathologist 'irresponsible' in earlier cases

Dr Patel, 63, was said by the disciplinary panel to have failed to identify marks on the body of a five-year-old girl which suggested she had been violently attacked prior to her death.

The panel's chairman, Richard Davies, said Dr Patel's report into the death of the girl, who was admitted to hospital with a head injury following what was said to be a "serious fall", gave no details of so-called "marks of violence".

Mr Davies said: "If there were no significant marks of violence in your view, by implication there were some marks of violence."

Mr Davies said the panel considered it "probable" that Dr Patel "performed only a cursory external examination of the body" ...

BBC NEWS  25 Aug 2010    Ian Tomlinson    Police State Britain

Tomlinson pathologist 'not qualified' for G20 case

Councils 'could cut 500,000 jobs and not harm services'

The UK's councils could do the same amount of work with 500,000 fewer staff if they matched the productivity of private firms, a report has claimed.

Junior staff in local authorities were, on average, productive only 32% of the time during working hours, said management consultancy Knox D'Arcy.

It said this compared with an average of 44% in the private sector ...

BBC NEWS  20 Aug 2010    Consultants Parasites    Reserve Army

Council workers are unproductive

Council staff waste two-thirds of working day

NHS faces £65bn bill for private finance schemes

The NHS in England faces a total bill of £65bn for new hospitals built under the private finance initiative (PFI), it was reported today.

Figures obtained by the BBC show that some NHS trusts were left with annual "mortgage" repayments accounting for more than 10% of their turnover.

The 103 schemes were valued at a total of £11.3bn when they were built.

But when rising fees and additional costs such as maintenance, cleaning and catering are taken into account, the NHS will have to pay back £65.1bn over the lifetime of the schemes.

According to the data, the NHS currently pays back a total of £1.25bn each year but this figure is expected to increase until 2030 when it will hit £2.3bn, the BBC reported.

The final payment will not be made until 2048 ...

Independent  13 Aug 2010    

The Biggest, Weirdest Rip-Off Yet

Government to 'prop up' PFI deals

PFI: A gauntlet for Brown

Treasury 'rigged' reports into success of (pfi) projects

City runs rings round taxpayers in PFI refinancings

The PFI is a massive scandal

'One in, one out' school exclusions rules on hold

Another step towards a two-tier school system: 'selective' academies; LEA 'sinks'

The government has put on hold the implementation of rules forcing schools in England to co-operate locally over excluded pupils.

Due to come into force in September, they would have meant all schools, including academies, had to join local behaviour partnerships.

Under these, schools expelling one pupil often would have to take an excluded pupil from another school.

The government said it wants to reduce bureaucracy to tackle poor behaviour.

However, with the coalition pushing to expand academies, which operate outside the control of local authorities, there are concerns that if schools are able to pull out of local arrangements, those with a higher proportion of disadvantaged pupils will suffer.

The Nasuwt teachers union said the decision to remove the requirement for cooperation risked increasing classroom disruption, bullying, gang-related violence and truancy.

BBC NEWS  12 Aug 2010    Tory Education 'Reform'

Tough talk on school discipline

Large drop in pupil expulsions

Austerity cuts prompt Southern Cross warning

Care homes group is latest private company to suffer ...

The group, which generates about 70% of its revenues from local government, said lower public sector budgets would cause its underlying earnings to be 15% lower than the consensus previously predicted by City analysts.

In a statement the company said:

"The short-term outlook is challenging as pressure grows to reduce overall public sector spending. The group has continued to experience a reduction in admissions from local authorities during the third quarter. The board expects that this position will not change significantly in the final quarter and consequently full-year adjusted ebitda [earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation] is expected to be about £53m."

Guardian  09 Aug 2010    Back to 1931 with George Osborne    Care of the Elderly    'Putting People First'

Debts that threaten the elderly and vulnerable

Government accused of NHS 'sell-off' over cuts

The Department of Health said it planned to explore options with the private sector for potential investment in NHS Professionals, which has 50,000 workers on its books, providing staff to cover more than two million shifts a year in 77 acute, mental health, foundation and primary care trusts.

NHS Professionals, a limited company owned by the Health Department, provides a range of services including nursing, medical, admin and clerical staff to NHS Trusts across England.

Karen Jennings, head of health at Unison, said:

"The whole reason that NHS Professionals was set up, was because private agencies were ripping off hospitals by charging them outrageous fees for recruiting or finding staff for shifts. It makes no sense at all to bring back private companies who will want their slice of the action in return.

"This proposal is purely about Tory plans to promote privatisation and hive off parts of the NHS to private companies, regardless of the consequences on patient care.

"At a time when hospitals are being forced to make huge savings, pushing up staffing costs unnecessarily is very damaging. A sell-off may bring a short-term cash injection, but cost NHS Trusts vast sums in the longer term." ...

Independent  05 Aug 2010

NHS trusts bid to attract more private patients

Hospitals bid to lure paying patients after Andrew Lansley abolishes cap on revenues ...

Critics say that because Lansley has abolished targets to reduce waiting times and is encouraging private care, patients will be back to a system where those with cash can jump ahead of those in need.

The chief executive of one of the largest NHS hospitals, speaking anonymously, said chasing new markets might also see management spread "too thinly and lose clinical oversight" ...

... academics caution that the rush to the market could lead not to NHS trusts profiting, but to them being undercut by ruthless foreign competitors or losing patients abroad.

"What's to stop US healthcare companies coming over here to poach patients. Or GPs sending patients to India for cheap operations? Or English hospitals raiding Scotland for sick people?" said Alan Maynard, professor of health economics at the University of York. "It could be a real mess." ...

Guardian  01 Aug 2010

Health Policy

Government to 'vigorously contest' Huntley claim

"Eight weeks basic training"

Soham murderer Ian Huntley is suing the prison service after being attacked by another inmate ...

Juliet Lyon, of the Prison Reform Trust, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme:

"The duty of care that prison staff have is a difficult one, but it is to hold people safely and securely, regardless of what they have done.

"The issue of compensation is a much more complicated one, but the issue of safety and security is a bedrock one...

"If a court sentences someone to custody, they are not sentencing them to be attacked.

"We have to expect that our prisons are going to be safe, secure places ...

"With very high-profile cases, quite often people are held separately," she said.

"They require a lot of extra supervision, with high numbers of staff ...

"Undoubtedly, it's a very difficult thing to manage for staff working in an overcrowded system who get eight weeks' basic training. It's a very tall order.

"We have to look to ministers to be absolutely clear with the staff that they expect nothing less than a safe, secure system."

Independent  31 July 2010    Punishment or Rehab?

Only one in ten police officers 'visibly available to public'

Just one in every 10 police officers is visibly available to the public despite year-on-year budget increases over the past four decades, a police watchdog warned today.

Sir Denis O'Connor, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, said an average of only 11% of officers and police community support officers (PCSOs) are able to meet frontline demands.

He highlighted how in some forces only six in every 100 officers are on a duty visible to the public during peak Friday night hours while larger numbers work quiet Monday mornings.

welshboy 3 days ago

The report produced is selective.

"From a total workforce in England and Wales of 143,835 officers, we estimate that just over 5,000 officers (=3.5% of total workforce) are on response duties across the entire country on a typical weekday morning24. There was significant variation across all forces: at worst, 1.2% of the total number of warranted officers were readily available for response; at best this was 8%."

This ignores the 100,000 civilians/pcso staff members.

Taken as a management of resources issue then in some forces less than 1% of available staff employed are engaged on response work.

This is a deplorable judgement by the police in allocating manpower to what the public expect to be a response activity.

The management of resources and priorities is a critical function and for the HMI to sign off forces with an efficiency /effectiveness certificate is a joke.

Independent  20 July 2010

Insurers Push Plans Limiting Patient Choice of Doctors

A warning from across the pond

As the Obama administration begins to enact the new national health care law, the country’s biggest insurers are promoting affordable plans with reduced premiums that require participants to use a narrower selection of doctors or hospitals.

The plans, being tested in places like San Diego, New York and Chicago, are likely to appeal especially to small businesses that already provide insurance to their employees, but are concerned about the ever-spiraling cost of coverage.

But large employers, as well, are starting to show some interest, and insurers and consultants expect that, over time, businesses of all sizes will gravitate toward these plans in an effort to cut costs ...

NYT  17 July 2010    

Staff at nuclear decommissioning quango paid £5m in bonuses

Chairman Stephen Henwood admits to 'shortcomings' in bonus structure as rewards increase by a third ...

A spokesman for the NDA said that senior managers received between £15,000 and £20,000 in bonuses last year and that the average bonus was about £12,000.

According to its annual report, executive directors were awarded £65,000 each.

The NDA is responsible for decommissioning the UK's old reactors, estimated at costing £73bn.

It is supposed to fund about half its annual clean-up budget through its commercial activities, such as operating the remaining Magnox reactors and reprocessing spent fuel.

The rest is paid for by the taxpayer, via the energy department.

But recently, lower income and higher decommissioning costs mean funding the NDA takes up two thirds of the energy department's annual budget.

During the year corresponding to last year's pay-outs – 2008/2009 – the NDA increased its income by over £500m largely as a result of higher electricity prices ...

Guardian  16 July 2010    Wealth Log

Union 'outraged' at head teacher £200,000 pay package

Despite the hysteria, and the inaccuracy of the £200k figure being bandied about, the basic fact remains that all salaries within a school are paid from a finite pot, so the more the head is paid, the less for the rest of the team. And a school is a team, or it's nothing. Worse, there is also evidence, sadly, that the neoliberal salary/bonus culture has entered the public sector, to its detriment as a service.

According to the GMB union, a total of 11 head teachers in London earn more than £150,000.

Mr Elms, who runs a school of 400 pupils, was paid a basic salary of £82,714 last year ...

BBC NEWS  13 July 2009

Parents defend high-pay headteacher

Balls sacks governors over £1.6m bonus payments

Balls wades into Copland bonus row

Bonus culture 'banking sickness' spreading to state schools

Schools criticised for City-style bonuses

State head on £130,000 bonuses puts his family on the payroll

Knighted headteacher resigns in wake of £1m bonuses allegation

Sats fiasco agency given bonuses

Pro-market agenda drives NHS reforms

The government today unveiled a radical, pro-market agenda in healthcare with proposals to encourage hospitals to increase private income and give GPs responsibility for "buying" medical services.

Health services will be judged by results, and failing hospitals will be allowed to go bust.

GPs will be handed much of the multimillion-pound budget handled by primary care trusts (PCTs), which will be abolished along with strategic health authorities.

Unions said the proposals, set out by the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, were an "untested, expensive exercise in political dogma".

Under the plans, hospitals will be freed from the current cap on private income – allowing them to lure wealthier patients for specialised surgery.

Lansley said that one of the best performing hospitals in Britain, the Royal Marsden, generated 25% of its income from private patients and this should be replicated across the country ...

Guardian  12 July 2010

NHS faces radical shift in power to GPs

Ministers also hope to turn the [NHS Foundation] trusts into privately run not-for-profit enterprises under which staff would leave the NHS and sell their services back.

The white paper signals ministers’ desire to stop pay rates within the service being set nationally, allowing salaries to vary according to local conditions.

With more than 20,000 managers jobs set to go with the abolition of both health authorities and primary care trusts, Sir David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, said talks over the current redundancy terms of a maximum of two years pay will be held with unions ...

FT  12 July 2010

Lansley puts business at the centre of NHS, not patients

Responding to today's publication of the NHS white paper, the health pressure group, NHS Support Federation, accused the government of favouring commercial business over patients and cast doubt on plans to save money by restructuring.

Federation director Paul Evans said:

"Patient power will be overwhelmed by the influence of unaccountable companies. No matter what individual patients want, profit-motivated firms will now have a huge say in what care is available and much of the fairness, value and public trust in the traditional NHS will be lost."

"GP commissioning will create a spaghetti-like snarl of conflicting interests, where profit will inevitably come before patients. Paying companies to spend the huge NHS budget on other companies is a recipe for scandalous waste and the sort of shady deals that the public must be protected from."

"Savings from sacking local NHS managers are unlikely to be as large as the government predict, due to redundancy costs and extra GP payments. Few GPs have the skills or the time to do this essential job and the plan to use the private sector will be expensive and sacrifice public control."

E-mail from NHS Support Federation dated 12 July 2010

Financial control devolved to GPs in huge NHS reform 'gamble'

cm999
This is a straight forward privatisation of the NHS. So come on Indy tell the public the truth.

The white paper transfers commissioning from the public sector, PCT's, to private companies, GP's.

PCT employees are being asked to spend the next 2 years working to privatise the service and create their own demise.

The net result will be the following

1. THe post code lottery will get far worse as now 500 groups will all decide to commission different services so some might not commission what you need where as another might

2. GPs will get even richer as they will commission services from each other on very favourable terms.

3. The bureaucracy will get far worse. At the moment each large acute hospital has 1 contract will a lead PCT who are responsible for managing the contract. Under this model each consortium will have a contract that will need to be managed and monitored. Fundholding required the hospitals to employ small armies of people to manage this and this will be no different

4. THe savings the NHS is supposed to be making wont happen as there will be nobody to actually make the savings, dont expect GPs to make savings it has never happened in the past so why it will this time is anyones guess.

Independent  13 July 2010

Ministers to end national pay deals for health workers

Hospitals eyeing 'private market'

Lansley bets it all on swift reforms

This Tory bonfire of regulations lets the rich foul the poor with impunity

Takeover of GP services by profit-led companies threatens traditional family GPs

Copy of email dated 09 July 2010

A growing number of GP surgeries across the country are being run by profit-led companies according to research published by the NHS Support Federation.

This trend has been underestimated according to the study, which looked at contracts put out to tender to run surgeries and health centres across England.

The report - NHS Unlimited? Who is running our GP services? - highlights a new breed of companies providing GP services that have grown out of the market-based NHS.

The study found 23 commercial companies that have multiple contracts and run between them a total of 227 GP surgeries and health centres.

Unlike traditional GPs, these companies have a business focus, operate in several areas and are enjoying rapid expansion.

Many of them are described as 'GP-led' and are therefore not perceived as commercial.

The Federation predicts that as more GP contracts are put out to tender these and other profit-making companies will continue to gain more control over NHS services.

The results come as the government is working on proposals to be published in a White Paper that gives GPs control of £80 billion worth of NHS funding to commission care and partner them directly with commercial businesses.

Federation director Paul Evans said, “We trust in the NHS to put patient needs first, but the growing control of services by commercial companies is a serious threat to this.

The public must urgently be involved as we believe that they would want to protect the values of the NHS and stop it becoming a franchise operation run by profit-led companies.”

“Little information is publicly available about many of these private companies or their contracts with the NHS. The public often have no say in choosing them and the government does not even collect information about who is running GP services.”

Ron Singer, local GP and President of the Medical Practitioners Union said, "The NHS is passing more services into private hands. And if the next step is to give GPs the huge budget to buy hospital services, the NHS could end up simply paying the bills, with guaranteed money flowing into private companies for providing and commissioning NHS services - a nightmare scenario."

The study highlighted several worrying trends in the competitive market to provide GP services.

•instances where companies have walked away from contracts resulting in extra costs for the NHS

•local GPs finding it difficult to compete for contracts due to the cost and complexity of the bid process

•shareholders of the GP companies have influenced the strategy of private healthcare providers when they do not generate enough financial return

•take-overs and mergers are introducing larger corporate interest and the prospect of many more GP services moving into the hands of profit-making companies that are unaccountable to the public

NHS Support Federation

NHS shake-up 'hands funding powers to GPs'

This Tory bonfire of regulations lets the rich foul the poor with impunity

NHS: Cuts and Commercialisation

This is the email from the NHS Support Federation, date 28 May 2010

The coalition's Programme for Government affects four key areas of health policy: the NHS budget, GP fundholding, structural change, and the provision of services. We've outlined the main issues below.

THE EXPECTED BUDGET SQUEEZE

It's true it could have been worse - the coalition has stuck to the Tory pledge of a year-on-year real-terms increase in the health budget. That's better than savage reductions, but in the NHS it will still feel like cuts because medical innovations mean healthcare inflation rises much faster than general inflation.

The new health secretary Andrew Lansley has said the government will introduce harsher efficiency savings than the £15-20 billion planned by Labour. Those plans would have meant a 3% saving each year - a figure many health economists say is unrealistically ambitious, but the new government will go further.

Initially the coalition wants us to believe this will be done by cutting the cost of managers and administration by a third over four years, but it is impossible to imagine that services won't suffer.

GP FUNDHOLDING

Before the Tories lost office in 1997 they introduced GP fundholding, whereby doctors were given the power to buy treatments for their patients in a market system.

It was a failure and New Labour abolished it, before changing their mind and bringing it back under the name Practice Based Commissioning.

Despite evidence that it doesn't work, the Tories remain enamoured with the idea and want to go much further. It seems this is an area where the Lib Dems have given way despite previously believing that the scheme is flawed.

Worryingly, the expectation is that under the Tory plans GPs will have to enter into partnerships with private companies to split the risk and the workload of commissioning.

Companies like Humana are already preparing for such partnerships and have said they welcome the chance to provide 'commissioning muscle', at a price.

This will give private corporations huge powers over what kind of treatments patients receive and who provides them - an entrenchment of the market system.

STRUCTURAL CHANGES

Oddly, the new government promised to end the continuous structural change of the Labour years, before immediately pledging to abolish Strategic Health Authorities altogether.

There will be a Health Bill this year which will introduce an independent NHS board to oversee the commissioning of services, working alongside the foundation trust regulator Monitor, which will be beefed up and given the power to regulate the finances of all trusts.

This kind of distant administrative change is hardly likely to have people protesting in the streets, but from the sketchy details released so far it looks like an important cementing of the structure of the market in healthcare.

PRIVATE PROVISION

So, of course, if you thought that the crazy market reforms of the Blair era had been dashed on the rocks of evidence and cost, you were wrong. Neither the Tories nor the Lib Dems opposed marketisation before the election, and their joint Programme for Government could only be clearer if it ditched the euphemism 'independent' for 'private':

"We are committed to much greater involvement of independent and voluntary providers. We will give every patient the power to choose any healthcare provider that meets NHS standards, within NHS prices. This includes independent, voluntary and community sector providers."

This means that Labour’s “preferred provider” status for NHS bodies is out.

This was a concession won by the unions before the election that meant the NHS was the first choice to provide NHS services - which might seem simply logical, but which infuriated the private sector. Now the marketers are seizing their opportunity - Jill Watts, chair of the private body NHS Partners Network, told the Financial Times: "We would like to see it spelt out that preferred provider has gone."

POSITIVES

It’s fair to say that so far there have been some positive developments. The Programme for Government promises to stop the centrally dictated closure of A&E and maternity wards, and Lansley has ordered a halt to the Darzi plan to reconfigure services into polyclinics. The new government will also make PCTs more accountable to local authorities and add local elected members to PCT boards, although it remains to be seen whether this will be more than a token gesture.

NHS Support Federation 

NHS boss earned £68,000 in bonuses - on top of six-figure salary

"Dr Patrick Geoghegan ... who earns £170,000-180,000 received
 £20,573 in the same year for helping it do well against NHS targets."

Notice Dr Geoghegan received bonuses for hitting targets, not for patient care.

Anna Walker, who was chief executive of the Healthcare Commission until it was disbanded last year, earned the largest combined amount in the past three years – £68,150 on top of her six-figure salary.

She received £22,375 in 2006-07, £23,000 in 2007-08 and £22,775 in 2008-09 for running the then NHS watchdog in England ...

This is the first time both the number of bonuses and their size has been disclosed. The Lib Dems sought information from every hospital trust, primary care trust (PCT), mental health trust and ambulance service in England, as well as other NHS bodies such as strategic health authorities. While some pay no bonuses, many do.

However, the figures do not reveal the full picture because some refused to disclose theirs and a few simply gave their chief executive's salary band.

The £32,000 one-off bonus and the £68,150 over three years are large but not atypical.

Laura Roberts, chief executive of the Manchester PCT, received £25,732 extra in 2008-09, while Dr Patrick Geoghegan, her counterpart at South Essex Partnership mental health trust – who earns £170,000-180,000 – received £20,573 in the same year for helping it do well against NHS targets ...

Observer  25 Apr 2010        Targets and Bonuses

How 'high quality' service helped four Royal Mail bosses earn £310,000 in bonuses

Those bonuses are now likely to be called into question after it emerged that the company’s market research is being manipulated by staff ...

The latest directors’ remuneration report by Royal Mail Holdings plc states that 30 per cent of the bonus paid to the company’s top executives is based on “service quality” which includes the delivery times of letters and parcels. The remainder of the bonuses are based on the company’s profits.

In 2008-09 Adam Crozier, the chief executive of Royal Mail Group, was entitled to a performance-related bonus of £453,000 on top of his basic salary of £633,000. A total of £135,900 of the bonus was based on “service quality”. He opted to put £314,000 of his bonus into a Long Term Incentive Plan, meaning he will only get the money if Royal Mail hits future targets, leaving him with a total pay package of £995,000, the second-highest of any public sector boss.

During his seven years at Royal Mail Mr Crozier, 46, controversially ended twice-daily deliveries and moved delivery times to later in the day, meaning many households do not get their mail until lunchtime at the earliest. He has also axed 45,000 jobs.

Telegraph  13 Mar 2010    Wealth Log

Royal Mail delivery tests 'rigged'

Managers oppose BMA's anti-commercialisation campaign

James Gubb, director of the health unit at independent think tank Civitas, said: ‘The BMA's stance goes to the heart of the debate in the NHS at present: whether the financial challenges facing the NHS meant taxpayers' money should be spent supporting NHS providers, or spent on the provider - NHS or non-NHS - that can offer the best deal on quality and cost.

‘I suspect most of the public would side with the latter. Affinity lies with the values underlying the NHS: universal, comprehensive healthcare, free-at-the-point-of-use, rather than who provides the service.'

healthcarerepublic  15 Feb 2010

Review to consider nurses issuing sick notes

Analysis of parliamentary questions and departmental accounts found the Whitehall bonus pot for 2008/09 added up to £129,393,139 - around £2 for every man, woman and child in the UK.

The figure was made up of end-of-year payments and rewards for performance on projects throughout the year.

The performance-related pay in Whitehall has spiralled despite assurances that senior civil servants were willing to show restraint during the recession when many in the private sector are having to take pay cuts or accept a wage freeze ...

Telegraph  23 Dec 2009

Miliband and the mercenaries

After a seven-year delay, the British government has finally revealed its plan for dealing with the private military industry.

The plan, released to public consultation on Friday afternoon, blows apart the growing consensus that there needs to be strict regulation of private military groups operating overseas.

In a dramatic about-face, the foreign secretary, David Miliband, has recommended that mercenary groups be left to sign up to a voluntary code of conduct through which they can police their own operations.

The UK private military sector has enjoyed a boom period following the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

As noted in War on Want's earlier report on corporate mercenaries, the income of British groups rose five-fold in the first year of the Iraqi occupation alone. Aegis Defence Services, headed by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer of arms-to-Africa fame, won contracts worth more than $750m to co-ordinate private military and security operations in Iraq, and has now secured a new contract to provide similar services in Afghanistan.

Launching the consultation, Miliband praised private military companies for their "important role" alongside British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hailed the industry as "essential" for Britain's future adventures abroad.

He did not mention the hundreds of allegations of human rights abuses committed by mercenaries over the past six years in Iraq, including the involvement of private military contractors in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal and the Blackwater killings, which left 17 Iraqis dead in September 2007 ...

Guardian 28 April 2009

Public consultation on private military companies

Corporate Mercenaries report

Afghanistan, surge of private security contractors

Blackwater Baghdad Massacre Was Unprovoked

Origins of the Government's Green Paper

Foreign Affairs - Ninth Report

BAPSC

MPs demand answers on arms-to-Africa

Suburban bail hostels a 'success'

A controversial scheme to house bailed and tagged defendants and inmates in residential areas may be expanded, Justice Minister David Hanson has said.

Amid fierce opposition in some areas, a company called ClearSprings runs properties for 400 ex-prisoners and suspects across England and Wales.

Mr Hanson says the scheme is a success because it has reduced prison numbers.

His comments come as talks begin over whether to close one of the firm's London bail hostels due to violence.

A consultation is under way over the hostel in Lewisham in the south of the city, after complaints about violence and anti-social behaviour.

The Metropolitan Police has confirmed it was not "properly consulted" about the centre ...

BBC NEWS 26 January 2009

Bail hostel project sparks secrecy row

Is there a bail hostel near you?

Nearly £5m has been paid in bonuses to staff at a funding body criticised for the "catastrophic mismanagement" of a college re-building scheme in England.

Figures released to the Conservatives show the money was shared by 3,106 staff at the Learning and Skills Council for the year to March.

The LSC was also criticised last year over delays in learning grants ...

In 2009, £4,868,463 was paid in bonuses to LSC staff - £200,000 more than in the previous year.

The funding body's chief executive Mark Haysom resigned in March, shortly before publication of the damning independent report on the building programme.

Mr Haysom did not receive a bonus payment for the year to March but took six months salary in lieu of notice.

The LSC's annual report shows he did receive a bonus for the previous year (up to March 2008) amounting to £36,000 ...

The LSC was criticised in the independent inquiry into the handling of a £2.3bn budget for 2008-11 for the rebuilding of colleges in England.

In short, the body had promised colleges funds for rebuilding projects after it had used up its budget ...

MPs on the Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee later complained of the "catastrophic mis-management" of the scheme ...

BBC NEWS  19 Dec 2009

College building scheme 'flawed'

Colleges face £170m projects loss

Colleges in building funds limbo

Inquiry into college renovations

More than half of larger PFI hospitals in financial trouble

There are 149 PFI hospitals in Britain. Over half are in financial difficulties, compared with a quarter of non-PFI hospitals. According to research by Professor Allyson Pollock at the University of Edinburgh, PFI currently costs 8.3% of a hospital's budget, compared to 5.8% for conventionally built hospitals - that's 40% higher.

The NHS will ultimately play £70bn for PFI hospitals valued at £12bn - nearly six times their actual building cost.

Whatever way you look at it, PFI does not offer value for money. It's continued use will only create more huge debts that threaten the future of the NHS.

NHS Campaign.org

The pros and cons of PFI hospitals

Government to 'prop up' PFI deals

The Great Debt Deceit

Taxpayer may have to pay £170bn for PFI schemes

Private finance initiative

The company that employed a foreign doctor who accidentally killed a patient on his first UK shift providing out-of-hours cover is losing its contract with the local NHS, it was revealed tonight.

The health authority has promised that "tough questions" will be asked of all companies that want to bid to run the services, including close examination of their induction procedures for staff and policies on the safe use of controlled drugs ...

The Guardian has also learned that two more incidents have emerged of patients who needed hospital treatment after being seen by doctors working for the same company and using the same painkilling drug used in the accidental killing.

The cases, which happened before last year's fatal mistake in Cambridgeshire, also involved Take Care Now, the company that hired the doctor Daniel Ubani when, on his first UK shift, he administered a dose of diamorphine 10 times the normal recommended maximum level to 70-year-old David Gray.

Guardian  21 May 2009

Exhausted relief doctor gave patient fatal dose

Quarter of polyclinics privately run

Private companies will run one in four of the NHS polyclinics that have been ordered by the Government, figures released yesterday suggest.

Of the 54 contracts announced so far, 14 have been won by private companies or groups led by the independent sector, according to data from Pulse, the newspaper for GPs ...

Pulse contacted 103 trusts after the end of the national tendering process on 31 December. Of those contacted, 48 had not yet awarded a contract for the polyclinic and one refused to provide details.

Local GPs who gathered together into consortiums won 30 per cent of contracts, the independent sector won 26 per cent and a further 7 per cent were awarded to individual practices ...

The deputy editor of Pulse, Richard Hoey said ...

"The country has been so focused on the financial crisis that the Government's controversial polyclinic drive has come in under the radar."

"But these results significantly strengthen the role of the private sector in the NHS, and are likely to spark a fresh debate about the extent to which our health service should remain in public hands.

"There are concerns that some GP-led health centres, and perhaps particularly those run by the private sector, may focus excessively on convenience of access and undermine the long-standing relationship between doctor and patient."

The Independent 20 January 2009

Assura Group placing successful, raises £30 mln of new equity

UK healthcare group Assura Group Ltd said it has successfully placed 81,081,080 new ordinary shares at 37 pence each on the London Stock Exchange, raising £30 million of new equity.

Chief executive Richard Burrell said: "We are delighted to announce the completion of the placing in this extremely challenging economic environment and are grateful for the support from our shareholders.

“The funds from the placing, together with the £50 million banking facility negotiated in October, ensure that Assura is well positioned to focus on its investment in its medical operating business and to take advantage of the opportunities that arise as the provision of NHS primary care services is increasingly opened up to the private sector,” he added.

All directors except non-executive Graham Chase took up further shares in the placing. Chairman Rodney Baker-Bates took a further 108,108 shares, raising his holding to 213,827 shares, or 0.067 percent, while his deputy John Curran increased his holding by 40,203 shares to 455,203, or 0.143 percent.

Chief executive Richard Burrell increased his stake to 4.045 percent by taking 1,703,481 new shares. He now holds 12,842,110 shares. Chief financial officer Nigel Rawlings took up 121,622 new shares and now holds 1,512,939 shares or 0.476 percent. ProActive Investors 21 Nov 2008

Treasury raises £257m in Qinetiq share sale

The UK Government hopes to draw a line under its controversial dealings in the defence-research company QinetiQ Group by selling off the last of its shares for £257m.

The Ministry of Defence announced yesterday it was to offload its 18.9 per cent holding in QinetiQ by the close of play. The Government has been criticised for selling a third of the company too cheaply to a private-equity firm in 2003. ...

Howard Wheeldon, senior strategist at BGC Partners, said: "We are surprised and disappointed, given the mere £257m that would be raised by selling the remaining 18.9 per cent stake, that it should have chosen to announce this placing of remaining shares now." He added that the move was "another sign of UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown's dislike of defence". ...

The Government sold a 33.7 per cent stake in QinetiQ in 2003 to private-equity giant Carlyle Group for £42m, a deal that many had criticised as hugely undervaluing the group. The implied market capitalisation of the company at the time was £130m.

These fears were crystallised when it floated in 2006, raising £618m and valuing QinetiQ at £1.3bn. The offering netted the private-equity group about £374m when it sold off its holding. At the same time, 10 executives saw their shares leap from £500,000 to £107m.

This June, a Public Accounts Committee inquiry into the process accused civil servants, led by QinetiQ's chairman, John Chisholm, of "behaving dishonourably" for pushing through a deal at a knockdown price.

Tory MP Edward Leigh, who chaired the committee inquiry, said the MoD "conducted the deal like an innocent at a table of card-sharps, with the taxpayer the fall guy, losing out on nearly £100m".

The Independent 10 September 2008

Qinetiq's £1bn flotation 'will sell taxpayer short'

Outsourcing of public services to the private and voluntary sectors has almost doubled to close to £80bn in little more than a decade and makes up a far larger part of the economy than previously thought.

A government-sponsored study by DeAnne Julius, the economist, revealed on Thursday that those sectors supply a third of public services – everything from National Health Service treatments to bin emptying, IT, back-office functions and RAF pilot training.

The market is worth £79bn, employs almost as many people as the NHS and accounts for 6 per cent of gross domestic product, making it a larger industrial sector than pharmaceuticals, automotive or electricity, gas and water. It also has considerable potential for further growth both at home and abroad, the study is expected to conclude ...

FT 09 July 2008

Failing NHS hospitals may be put under private sector management in a last-ditch attempt to improve services to patients, the government will disclose today.

Ben Bradshaw, the health minister, will unveil a regime for NHS trusts that persistently provide substandard care or cannot balance the books.

It will give David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, powers to sack the entire board of hospitals unable to meet tight deadlines for improvement and replace them with a new management team.

Bradshaw will say the job could be done by "private sector management, provided on the basis of a management contract". ...

Guardian 04 June 2008   NHS hospitals can seek sponsors

Private companies are to be given the go-ahead to take over the running of specialist units for teaching the country's most disruptive state school pupils.

Ministers are considering allowing them to profit from the provision under a shake-up of the way specialist pupil referral units are run, outlined in a White Paper yesterday.

The move is expected to pave the way for firms such as Group 4 Securicor and Serco, which are already highly involved in the public sector, to take over units. A spokesman for Group 4 Securicor said the firm would study the proposals and "assess whether there are opportunities to provide additional public services". ...

Independent 21 May 2008   

... closure mania is gripping every corner of Britain's public service, and people do not like it. The government has shut almost half of all post offices, from 21,000 to 12,000, of which only 6,500 are said to be "profitable". The remainder require a subsidy of £150m, which is less than the professional fees on a single government hospital contract.

Simon Jenkins 19 Mar 2008

More and more I think of privatisation as being not just about the takeover of resources and power by corporate interests, but as the retreat of citizens to private life and private space, screened from solidarity with strangers and increasingly afraid or even unable to imagine acting in public.

This is how human beings get downgraded from citizens to consumers.

We talk about politicians being in public life, but they seldom appear in the public space where everyone is free to appear as a citizen.

Rebecca Solnit

UK taxpayers could have gained "more money" from the privatisation of defence research firm Qinetiq, the National Audit Office (NAO) has said.

While saying taxpayers could have gained "tens of millions" more, the NAO also condemned an incentive scheme that netted fortunes for Qinetiq's bosses.

But Lord Moonie, the minister behind the original sale to a US buyout firm, said that he had tried to delay it.

He was a defence minister in 2003 when a third of Qinetiq was sold to the US private equity group, Carlyle, for £42m.

Stock markets had slumped and Lord Moonie felt that the Ministry of Defence (MOD) would not receive a decent price for its shareholding, said BBC business editor Robert Peston.

But he was unable to resist Treasury pressure for the sale, Lord Moonie told the BBC.

"We were reluctant to proceed with the sale, but a combination of the Treasury and the fact we needed the money for items in our budget persuaded us to go on with it," said Lord Moonie. ...

Qinetiq's 10 most senior managers gained £107.5m after the move, a return of 19,990% for their total £540,000 investment in shares, a return labelled "excessive" by the NAO.

Qinetiq's two most senior executives, chairman Sir John Chisholm and chief executive Graham Love, made spectacular gains.

Sir John invested £129,000 in the company and now has shares worth £23m. Graham Love turned £106,000 into £20m.

Qinetiq's bosses were allowed to negotiate the terms of the incentive scheme with Carlyle while the private equity firm was bidding for the business, the NAO added.

Conservative MP Edward Leigh, chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said the taxpayer had been "short-changed" and that top Qinetiq managers had "won the jackpot". ...

BBC NEWS 23 November 2007

MPs slate Qinetiq privatisation

MPs accuse MoD staff who profited from sell-off

Qinetiq shambles

Qinetiq consortium wins bulk of £16bn MoD contract

NAO Report

Greed of the highest order

The government has won a vote over plans to privatise the Probation Service, despite a backbench revolt.

MPs voted 293 to 268 in favour of the Offender Management Bill - cutting the government's majority from 62 to 25.

Critics said letting firms and voluntary groups in England and Wales run services would increase reoffending rates and destroy "local connections".

The government said reforms were key to improving public safety and insisted the public sector would be involved. ...

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said the Conservatives were voting against the bill because it was a move to more centralised government control - which was "bad in its own right".

But he also said that with the Home Office already "struggling to cope... that sort of over-centralisation is a recipe for disaster, something the home secretary might recognise."

He added that the bill would introduce the third Probation Service restructuring in six years - "it is impossible to improve service delivery in this way." ...

BBC NEWS 28 February 2007

It’s like putting Enron in charge of the power grid. That’s how US businessman Phil Zweig describes the privatisation of NHS procurement.

It was a big day for the NHS on 27 September. At the Labour Party conference the unions won a vote condemning the marketisation of the health service. Outside the conference hall striking NHS Logistics workers protested at their jobs being handed over to a private company in a £4 billion privatisation.

None of this worried health secretary Patricia Hewitt, who combines Cameronite optimism with a degree of detached composure that recalls Margaret Thatcher. Hewitt is almost unflappable. But for a few short minutes that afternoon, at a smart fringe meeting of New Labour’s favourite think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), she was well and truly flapped.

It happened like this. After a typically banal speech on the subject of ‘Can the NHS meet rising expectations?’ Hewitt took questions from the floor. The microphone was passed to an American businessman, who asked why she was handing over NHS Logistics, the health service’s supplies organisation, to a ‘criminal organisation’. It was difficult to tell what he was saying, because as soon as his question began to sound critical the chair, Richard Brooks of the IPPR, declared he wouldn’t take it. The microphone man tried to grab the mike back, but the questioner hung on heroically and managed to shout the rest of his enquiry, which Hewitt refused to answer.

The American wasn’t satisfied with that.

When Hewitt got up to leave for another meeting, he got up too, and chased her. At which point, all the journalists in the room got up and chased them both.

Michael Dixon, chair of the NHS Alliance, whose speech followed Hewitt’s, had to watch as a third of his audience ran off. Moving at pace towards the exit, Hewitt was definitely flustered.

The pursuing American was Phil Zweig, who had come to the UK to warn of the folly of handing over NHS procurement from NHS Logistics to US giant Novation.

NHS Logistics bought and distributed health equipment to hospitals. It was an award-winning non-profit organisation, reinvesting its surpluses in the NHS. Faced with a glaring example of public sector success, the government decided to outsource it to the German delivery firm, DHL, and its sub-contractor, Novation, which is to carry out the crucial role of procurement with control over £4 billion of NHS money.

According to Zweig, Novation is ‘the largest and easily the most corrupt US hospital group purchasing organisation’ (GPO). ‘Your government will be in bed with a rogue organisation that is currently under criminal investigation by the US Department of Justice,’ he told Red Pepper.

This investigation centres on whether Novation is guilty of bribery and defrauding US public health schemes.

Novation has also endured four hearings before the US senate antitrust subcommittee, investigations by the Connecticut attorney general, and critical studies by various US government agencies.

In the late 1990s Zweig’s company, Retractable Technologies, developed a blood collection device that protected nurses from HIV and hepatitis. These could be produced for 27 cents a time, but Novation suggested adding their private label and inflating the price to a dollar, splitting the extra profits. The deal didn’t go through, and Novation and other GPOs allegedly attempted to block the product from the market. In the ensuing legal action Retractable Technologies received a $155 million settlement.

Zweig is involved in a campaign, Stop GPO Kickbacks, working to change the corrupt supplies industry. He is ‘appalled’ that just as campaigners are making headway in the US, the UK government has decided to import some of the worst features of the US system.

‘It works this way,’ he says. ‘Giant multinational healthcare suppliers pay kickbacks of up to 20 per cent, disguised as administrative fees, marketing fees, prebates, rebates and the like, to Novation and the other GPOs to ensure that their products have exclusive access to hospitals.

In return, these monopolies get sole source, multi-year contracts that make it virtually impossible for a small, innovative company with a better pacemaker, syringe, or even surgical gloves to market its products.’

But, Patricia Hewitt might have said if she hadn’t been running out of the door, Novation will be able to save the NHS £1 billion over 10 years by bulk purchasing (a figure apparently plucked from the air, as no business case has been provided). Zweig disagrees: ‘Novation has no incentive to save money for hospitals, because higher price and higher volumes translate into bigger fees. Putting Novation in charge of NHS supplies is like appointing Jack the Ripper to run your neighbourhood watch. Or to use a more recent analogy, hiring Enron to operate your power grid.’

But that is what has happened – DHL/Novation took over on 1 October. Zweig believes Novation may imminently be indicted in the US, leaving the UK government in an embarrassing position.

Hewitt seems to have decided this is a price worth paying – indeed, that any price is worth paying – in the relentless privatisation of the health service. The week before the party conference she made a speech saying that there would be no limit to private sector involvement in the NHS.

‘America’s healthcare system is the world’s most expensive and inefficient,’ Zweig warns. ‘If that’s what your government wants for its citizens, it has taken a major step in the right direction.’

Red Pepper November 2006

Novation ex-worker files suit alleging kickbacks

'UnumProvident is an outlaw company'

US firm faces 'bribes' probe

The Investigation of Novation

Stop GPO Kickbacks

Hijacking at the Hospital

On Target

On Target

Health Care Renewal

Mapeley, the listed offshore property group which caused a political storm when it bought Inland Revenue offices, paid no corporation tax last year in any of the jurisdictions in which it operates.

The company disclosed the lack of any corporation tax liabilities yesterday as it rejected the idea of REIT status. Since it already pays no tax, there would be no advantages, it insisted, the FT reports.

The Revenue attracted criticism for the sale, which meant the properties being held offshore as part of an avoidance plan.

Accountancy Age 10 May 2006

Property investment company builds up cash pile

"Outsourcing Property Management"

ID interrogation centres

Tax-free Mapeley to reject Reit status

Revenue sell-off to tax haven firm

It's time to face up to the unpalatable truth - Labour's public-service reforms have failed. Determined to liberate public services from producer interests, the government itself has turned into the oppressor. It is now locked into a nightmare cycle in which each round of reforms makes things worse, justifying further reforms which founder in their turn because (you've heard this before) in attempting to do the wrong things righter, they actually become wronger.

Some of us have long suspected this is the case. But now we have Systems Thinking in the Public Sector (Triarchy Press), a new book by John Seddon (full disclosure: I helped to edit it) which pinpoints in detail why the reforms have gone wrong - and how to put them right.

Seddon pins the blame squarely on the coercive 'deliverology' regime dreamt up (the correct expression) by the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit (PMDU) in Tony Blair's first term. As he shows, New Labour embraced the 'public choice' theory that had so excited right-wing intellectuals under Margaret Thatcher: basically, applying economic principles to politics. The problem was that civil servants, like any 'producers', tended to put their own interests above those of the public they were supposed to serve.

Since they could not use the 'perfect democracy' of the market to tell public-service providers what to do, Blair and the delivery unit eagerly enlisted centrally set targets instead. They were reinforced by carrots and sticks wielded by inspectors and other enforcers, with the PMDU at the apex ...

Instead of making providers accountable to citizens, the new regime made them accountable to ministers and the burgeoning bureaucracy of performance management.

Do quotas and targets enforced by a regulatory bureaucracy remind you of anything? Yes: they're called central planning and don't work any better in UK local government offices and police stations than in Soviet tractor factories ...

The Guardian 04 May 2008

Ministers have missed 122 of 346 Whitehall performance targets

Hospitals do rig waiting lists to hit targets

Reforming the regime