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Cameron reveals government’s four NHS commitments

21/02/12

Prime minister David Cameron has revealed the ‘four Fs’ which he believes sum up the government’s approach to the NHS, as he attempted to stave off criticism of the Health Bill at a Downing Street summit yesterday.

Cameron told attendees he recognised the ‘need to get the narrative right’ to win support for the government’s NHS reforms and said the meeting had demonstrated there was a “need to have a focus on integrated care [and a] need to confront the fears and uncertainty’ that surround the reforms.

He said there are ‘four Fs’ that could sum up the government’s approach to the NHS. These are:

• The government’s ‘commitment to the founding principles of the NHS’
• Its ‘commitment to funding’ real terms increases every year
• Its ‘commitment to making [the NHS] fit for the future’ (a reference to the reforms)
• A commitment to ‘freedom for local decision making’

The summit was held at Downing Street yesterday afternoon, and was attended by several national health representative organisations. Health secretary Andrew Lansley, former Labour health minister Lord Ara Darzi, NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson, and DH permanent secretary Una O’Brien were also in attendance.

The meeting has also come under fire for ‘neglecting’ to invite those groups most critical of the Bill; including the royal colleges of GPs, nursing and midwifery.

And the event received further media attention as Andrew Lansley was confronted by protestors in Whitehall as he entered the meeting. Indeed, attendees were later encouraged to leave by a different entrance.

It is understood that David Cameron told meeting attendees that he believed the Bill would pass through Parliament in the next two months, and he wanted to discuss its implementation. The meeting was aptly titled, ‘Implementation of the reforms’.

However, a series of groups, particularly medical royal colleges and patient organisations, said they wanted to reiterate their concerns about the Bill. In particular, sources said, representatives of royal colleges described how concern among their members had ‘hardened in recent weeks and months’.

One source said how there ‘was a lot of rehearsal on the series of reasons why people are uneasy about the Bill’. Attendees also apparently told Cameron of continuing ‘concern, lack of clarity, uncertainty and fear’.

Lord Darzi is understood to have emphasised the need for NHS reform – particularly in commissioning – but argued he was strongly against the ‘demonisation of management’.

One of the attendees, National Voices chief executive Jeremy Taylor, told how he raised his concerns about the Bill, and called for the government to set out a ‘plan for integrated care’, for it to address the funding and organisation of social care, and for it to put clearer patient rights in the NHS Constitution.

Chief executive of the Foundation Trust Network, Sue Slipman (who also attended), said David Cameron appeared to have recognised the need to listen to organisations during the ‘transition phase’ of the reforms, and that groups had successfully emphasised risk to NHS performance and finance is high.

Sir Stephen Bubb – Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations chief executive – said that Cameron had also expressed his frustration that concerns about reforms had not been addressed by the NHS Future Forum ‘listening exercise’ last year.

Mike Farrar, NHS Confederation chief executive, went further to urge the prime minister to engage NHS more widely in implementing the reforms. Following the meeting, he said:

‘Whatever parliament now decides, getting the whole NHS and clinical community behind any changes will be vital to their success.

‘Clearly, there are rifts that will need to be healed if this is to happen. People outside the meeting at No. 10, as well as those inside the room, need to be engaged.’