£1m is just "small beer" for Labour

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has rightly leapt on a remark made by Alan Johnson on this morning's Today programme.

Health Secretary Mr Johnson was asked: "Do you not have any doubts you have a millions pounds and you could have spent it on drugs, you could have spent it on treatments but instead you have spent it on a document which doesn’t actually change anything?"  The document being the NHS Constitution.

Johnson replied: “Oh, no come on….this is small beer in the NHS budget…”

Mr Lansley said that the remark betrayed Labour's "cavalier attitude to taxpayers’ money".

CCHQ have issued a list of what £1m could buy:

• 33 Nurses (based on salary for a top Band 5 nurse, including National Insurance contributions)
• OR 30 Teachers (based on salary for a teacher with 5 years experience, including NI)
• OR 26 policemen (based on salary for a policeman with 10 years’ service, including NI)
• OR 32 Soldiers (based on salary for a corporal on Level 3, Higher Scale, including NI)
• OR 132 hip replacement operations (based on NHS Tariff 2008-09)

Now all we need is a list of what we could have done with the money thrown at the banks.

Tim Montgomerie

Comments

[GB£.com]

"Now all we need is a list of what we could have done with the money thrown at the banks."

Pointless when the Tories actually supported the policy.

..unless of course you intend to replace Osborne with Redwood who opposed this reckless spending.

[London Tory]

Postie's flippant remark sums up Labour's attitude to the NHS. They have long seen it as a bloated cash cow, who's principal purpose is to bankroll Labour's diminishing payroll vote.

Its the producer over the consumer every time under Labour.

[rob atkins]

NHS Constitution ? One again, Labour fiddles while the country burns ...

[Mike Wood]

Presumably the £20billion that the taxpayer ahs currently lost from the bank bailout could have paid for:
132,000 Nurses (based on salary for a top Band 5 nurse, including National Insurance contributions)
AND 120,000 Teachers (based on salary for a teacher with 5 years experience, including NI)
AND 104,000 policemen (based on salary for a policeman with 10 years’ service, including NI)
AND 128,000 Soldiers (based on salary for a corporal on Level 3, Higher Scale, including NI)
AND 528,000 hip replacement operations (based on NHS Tariff 2008-09)

[Bexie]

I heard the comment on the Radio this morning and my first response was how naive is that man?

I shows an extraordinary amount of condescension to the public to say that blowing £1m of public money on some trite nonsense from a friendly consultancy is "small beer"

[Malcolm Dunn]

£1,000,000 is small beer for the NHS but the NHS Constitution would be a waste of money if it cost £10.

[The Bishop Swine]

Well Mike as I always warn people, you cannot be in the Market and expect overnight profits. Of course the fall in banking share value is a worry, but I still expect the governement (which will be us by then BTW) to make a very large profit in the long run.
I see a bargin and will be buying a good few shares at today's prices. Of course I do not expect to become rich overnight but I am certain that give it five years or so, it will turn out to be a good investment indeed.

[rascalrob]

The money from the banking bailout? Would have been far better giving a tax rebate to the entire countrywhich would have helped pay off debts, put the banks in a less precarious position and would have also given a healthy boost to commerce from those who would choose to spend it. But that's too simple for Brown and wouldn't let him have a nice barchart that he could shade in with his special non-toxic felt-tips that Mandy and Alastair bought him.

[rugfish]

Unashamedly, I've put those 100 reasons to change Britain on my blog and I intend to start memorising them.

http://rugfish.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-britain-needs-to-change.html#links

As to the topic, I've just been watching Andrew Lansley live in the commons and he's a total star. The NHS will be most safe in his hands and commonsense will be restored by him. I hope he's happy where he is and David Cameron doesn't shift him about before he can get the job done he wants to do.

You can tell he's straining at the bit to get stuck in, and he promotes trust and competence in equal measure.

Good show Andrew.

[pp]

Well if £1,000,000 is small beer, I'd be more than happy for labour to give me a pint of it!

Or maybe he just overestimates the level of subsidy he receives in the commons bars...

[Mike Wood]

The Bishop Swine:
The share price of the banks is bound to increase over the next five years or so and so the final cost to the taxpayer on the shares "bought" in the first bailout is likely to end up lower than the current £20billion defecit. However, I don't expect the public purse to make a profit on those shares once you allow for the additional taxpayers' money that is bound to be poured into the banks once they are nationalised.
The only way in which the bailout is good economics is by comparing it to the alternatives (and some would disagree that the alternatives are that bad). Like much of the Government's response to the economic crisis, they were left with little choice but to take the action they did but that is more a result of the mistakes that they made in the past than those actions being good for the economy.

[clive elliot]

This idea of identifying waste and then expressing it in terms of much-wanted alternative buys is a very good one.

It could be used on much bigger things like the NHS computer scheme or many other Government programmes that have failed and cost taxpayer cash.

It's very important, by constant repetition of examples presented in a memorable and appealing way,to drive home the truth that this Government is incompetent and couldn't run a chip shor.

Well done Mr Lansley.

[rugfish]

Why is it not possible in this day and age, for NHS hospitals to make public, information regarding the itemised running costs and other inventories on the internet for the public to see ?

They could also show whether certain drugs are available in their area, patient waiting times, recruitment needs, etc etc.

If the public is given this information then surely it may help to identify ( to the public ), what levels of service they should expect and what it costs including waste. In particular, I don't see why rudimentary costs for levels of management which are employed, should not be open to public scrutiny. ( Who makes decisions on pay ) ? ( Who makes decisions to recruit in the Philippines )? ( Who makes decisions to pay salaries upwards to £250,000 pa ) ?

Further, any public body should surely be open to full public scrutiny of the taxpayer.

[Jack Stone]

the NHS computer is actually a good idea but its been badly managed in the way its been brought in. It is far more efficient to have records on computers than it is to have them on paper. Doctors can access them quicker and they can be more quickly read and altered.
It would sound far more sensible of Conservative spokesmen to attack the inefficiency of the government rather than the idea. Frankly I think that whenever I hear Conservative spokesmen attack the NHS computer system I think they sound like the eighty year old who is forever saying computers they never had them in my day!!!!

[rugfish]

Posted by: Jack Stone | January 21, 2009 at 17:37

Yes indeed Jack, however since Accenture is the 'consultancy firm', which 'advises' governments and is the same firm which gave the NHS a £12 billion computer which doesn't work, and believes that the current crisis calls for a “total rethink” of how governments work together, and makes a political argument for what amounts to "global politics", "global security", "global decision making", "global economics" and "global control", I imagine through their computers. I find it all a bit too dodgy for my liking and would just have local computers set up by local British firms.

[Malcolm Dunn]

So do you support spending £12 bn on it Jack?

[IRJMilne]

My impression was that said system was not exactly what doctors wanted in any case; and we can't afford to buy everything we could possibly want anyway. But I thought the main Conservative attack on the NHS computer system *was* on the government's poor efforts at delivering it?

[James Hopkins]

I wonder if Alan Johnson considered £1million to be "small beer" when he was delivering the post in all winds and all weathers for probably not very much money ...

[pp]

I'd like to see published business cases for all government expenditure.

NHS computer system? whats the cost/benefit?

As an average bloke I may see my GP maybe once every three or four years... dont ask me his name, I don't know. I don't care exactly who 'doctors' for me, any more than I care exactly which mechanic servcies my car - they are all qualified arn't they?. I can't imagine there is much scope for making any savings on my medical records (or those of most of my peers)...

The real reason the government wants medical records computerised is becaue the family practitioner patient database is the most complete and reliable database of people that they have... So the data from this system would be key in supporting their ID schemes... They have had a number of goes at re-using this data - and no doubt will keep trying. Unless their new 'childrens register' makes it unnecessary....

[Super Blue]

Hold the front page!

Stone admits to Labour getting things wrong.

[Adam in London]

pp,

the government does publish business cases. They're called Impact Assessments. Here is the one for the NHS Consitution:
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsLegislation/DH_093427

PS: am I the only one who thinks people are being hysterical for criticising the Health Secretary when he suggests that 0.001% of the NHS budget might be small beer in the grand scheme of health policy?

[Andy]

I’m backing Alan Johnson here, this is a silly argument over nothing. He may have been naive in how he said it but the crux of the matter is that he's correct. And before you attack me, I'm a Tory just like the rest of you. Just not one who feels the need to be pointlessly partisan.

£1 million is sod all when the NHS receives £20 billion (20,000 times the cost of the NHS constitution!!!) per year. He’s right, the money is essentially meaningless in the budget as a whole. Far more is wasted on administrative staff, pointless managers and unused focus groups than on a document which, in the right hands, would be a useful tool for patients.

The computer system is also intrinsically a good idea, just poorly managed by ministers and civil servants who have no real world business experience and no fear of being fired for screwing up.

As for your flippant remark at the end: Tim, would you have NOT bailed out the banks?!! The Lehmanns mess was bad enough to clear up (and we are nowhere close in resolving who owes what), imagine the effect of a retail bank collapsing. Ludicrous.

[pp]

Thanks Adam - that explains a lot.

In particular I think it explains why Johnson took the line he did, rather than cite the bizzare document you refer to.

Has anyone read it? It says that having the constitution will deliver net benefits of over £220,000,000.

So thats all right then.

[Christian Gowers]

The NHS constitution:

Run Hospitals
Cure people

Where's my million quid?

[steve weeks]

Some guy a few weeks back on the andrew marr show mentioned the idea of the government setting up our own taxpayers bank. It could have control over interest rates, control lending and in doing so compete with existing lenders. The major banks would have no option but to offer similar deals and increase lending. Competition is the answer.

[pp]

The (near) quater of billion quid the constitution will deliver is based on patient being able to compain more often and more effectively, so 'forcing' health authorities to improve their services.

Seems to me that the government are admitting that they can't make the NHS deliver, so are dumping the reponsibility on the public (even assuming you accept their figures).

Steve, I don't beleive governments should ever run businesses - capitalism is 'survival of the fittest' - poor businesses *must* be allowed to fail, it clears the way for fit businesses to expand. This is balanced by (to use the american phrase) 'anti-trust' requirements to ensure that initial success isn't then used to stifle competition. A government would *never* admit that a business they ran was a 'bad' one, so would pour our money in endlessly, and block genuine good businesses.

Had a UK bank gone bust, the others would have been forced to get their acts together, and find their own way through - as it is they are just sitting around, not lending, waiting to see what Gordon is going to do next... They are relatively content with the way things are - why should they do anything? They are behaving like nationalised businesses already.

[steve weeks]

I agree to a certain extent, the yanks let lehmanns go down as an example to the rest of them. We never did, now our banks all think the government will always back them up.

Talking of a competitive market, if a few of them did go, where there's a gap in the market someone will always fill that gap. Whether it be chinese money or not, that is the definition of globalisation.